B2B payment companies target Asia-Pacific
As Western market conditions have increased headwinds for many cross-border payment companies, growing numbers have looked to new markets to find growth. And in B2B payments, increasing numbers are looking to Asia-Pacific through direct expansions into the region.
While some players have opted to increase their presence in APAC, and particularly in parts of Asia, through partnerships or even acquisitions, others are more directly entering the region through new hires and the opening of offices. We’ve seen several announcements to that end this month in particular.
Some companies have expanded from developed Western markets into APAC, with Singapore, arguably Asia’s most important city in terms of cross-border payments players, seeing expansions from the US’s Fiserv and the UK’s BVNK.
While the former has achieved a key Major Payment Institution licence to operate in the country, the latter has made a critical appointment while it awaits the same. Meanwhile, having expanded into both Singapore and Hong Kong in 2022, Canada’s Nuvei is now launching in Australia following the acquisition of key operating licences in the country.
There are also players who have built strong presences in part of APAC that are now expanding into other countries within the region. India’s PayMate, for example, also expanded to Singapore in 2022, as well as Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka, and this month announced it was expanding to Australia and Malaysia, as well as Oman and South Africa. Meanwhile, Singaporean Thunes has made inroads into the often-challenging market of China with the opening of a Beijing office that will spearhead the launch of Thunes China, a project into which it is investing CNY 100m ($13m).
How big is the B2B cross-border payments market?
