Payments companies often describe themselves as global platforms. But in Asia-Pacific, global reach matters little if a provider cannot make local payments work reliably.

That was my main takeaway from Xendit’s recent analyst day in Kuala Lumpur. The company presented a platform spanning payment acceptance, payouts, treasury, and embedded finance. It reported processing more than 544 million transactions and over $80 billion in payment volume in 2025.

The scale was notable, but the infrastructure beneath it was more interesting: direct connections to local payment rails, multiple routes around potential failures, locally held licenses, and teams with deep knowledge of individual markets. The event highlighted two lessons for the payments industry.

Local Payment Depth Matters More Than Logo Coverage

Xendit said it directly connects more than 100 local payment methods through one integration across markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and Hong Kong. A merchant may see a single API, but the work behind it remains highly local. It involves relationships with banks and payment networks, technical integrations, regulatory approvals, payment-status data, refunds, reconciliation, and operational support.

The payment company also holds local payment licenses in seven countries in APAC, alongside licenses covering selected remittance, lending, financing, and banking services in Asia. Its portfolio includes a Major Payment Institution license in Singapore and a Money Service Operator license in Hong Kong. This regulatory footprint gives Xendit greater control over how it accepts, routes, settles, and pays out funds in its core markets, reducing its dependence on third-party intermediaries for selected services.

This is why counting payment-method logos is becoming a weak way to compare providers. Two PSPs may offer the same method while relying on different infrastructure. Intermediaries can accelerate market entry, while direct connections can give a provider greater control over performance, data, product design, and exception handling.

Refunds show why this matters. In the Philippines, a merchant can use Xendit’s API to refund a GCash transaction fully, partially, or through several partial refunds against the same payment. Xendit submits the request to GCash, receives confirmation, and returns the status to the merchant through a webhook. GCash allows refunds for up to 180 days. In Indonesia, Xendit is developing QRIS refund capabilities through its direct acquiring role, including refunds beyond the standard seven-day window, broader issuer coverage, and API-based automation.

Merchants should therefore look beyond coverage. They should ask who owns each connection, what data it returns, how refunds and disputes work, and who is accountable when something fails.

Resilience Requires Redundant Payment Routes

Most providers discuss uptime in terms of cloud regions, data centers, and application availability. Those controls are essential, but a PSP can remain online while merchants cannot transact because a bank, connector, intermediary, or national network has failed.

Xendit described multiple bank connectors and automatic failover triggers across Southeast Asia. One example was the 2023 LockBit ransomware attack on Indonesia’s largest Islamic bank Bank Syariah Indonesia. The incident disrupted the bank’s mobile banking, ATMs, and branches for days, affecting 18 million customers. Xendit’s orchestration layer comprising multiple bank options and interbank transfer solutions routed payments away from the failed path to an alternative connection, allowing merchants to continue processing payments.

The broader lesson is that payment resilience must be measured across the complete transaction path, not only within the PSP’s software. Buyers should ask whether alternative connectors exist for critical methods, how degraded routes are detected, how duplicate payments are prevented, and whether reconciliation remains consistent after failover.

What The Industry Should Take Away

Merchants should evaluate infrastructure ownership, fallback routes, refund capabilities, regulated entities, and reconciliation, not just pricing and method coverage. PSPs should invest selectively where direct connectivity, licensing, and redundant routing create measurable customer value. Banks should recognize that providers capable of simplifying this complexity are gaining greater influence over the merchant relationship.

Xendit’s next challenge is to turn its Southeast Asian depth into a differentiated cross-regional proposition without weakening the technical focus and payment expertise behind it. The broader principle applies well beyond one company: in payments, the infrastructure customers cannot see often determines the experience they ultimately receive.

What To Read Next

Forrester has dedicated research reports and blog posts on payments innovations such as local payments, stablecoin-based payments and agentic payments, including:

Predictions 2026: Payments

Predictions 2026: Asia Pacific

The State Of Agentic Payments For B2B

The Merchant Payment Providers In Asia Pacific Landscape, Q3 2024

The State Of Digital Retail Payments In Asia Pacific, 2024

Key Takeaways From The Singapore FinTech Festival’s 10th Anniversary

Forrester clients can set up an inquiry or guidance session to discuss these topics with us.

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