The right international payment gateway can make your expansion into the Asia-Pacific region much smoother. What many growing multi-national companies don't realise soon enough is that there's more to consider than just multiple currencies and different payment options. This guide will explain how to choose the best international payment gateway to support local payment methods, reduce costs, and improve payment acceptance.
The Asia-Pacific region spans dozens of markets, each with unique languages, currencies, and regulatory expectations. It would be fairly obvious to say that what works in one market might not work in another. For instance, PayPal is fully prohibited in Thailand, while certain online services may be taxed in the Philippines. A generic international payment gateway, to be frank, might struggle to keep pace with these variations.
Acquirers, schemes, and real-time payment infrastructures vary from market to market. QR payments are mainstream in China and Thailand, but barely exist in others. Cross-border fees and compliance rules further complicate things, especially for businesses relying on a single provider to cover multiple countries.
The right payment gateway should make it as easy as the click of a button to toggle these on by market. After all, GrabPay may be popular in Singapore, but it isn't as popular as GCash or Maya in the Philippines.
Multi-currency pricing is an obvious necessity, as are options for like-for-like settlements. Transparent FX conversion with minimal spread (ideally) can protect your bottom line and simplify reconciliation.
Local acquiring means higher approval rates and lower fees. Cross-border may be faster, but it may sacrifice balance speed and cost-efficiency.
Checkout in one or more of the local languages and the local currency, to nobody's surprise, improves conversion. Some Asian countries have dozens, if not hundreds, of languages and dialects. With the right provider, you might not even need to think about this at all.
Mobile-first design also improves user retention; after all, gone are the days when digital payments were only made through laptops.
Markets like Singapore and Hong Kong offer relatively smooth regulatory paths, while countries like India and Japan tend to be more insular and complex. The best provider can help you navigate licensing, SCA requirements, and 3DS compliance without slowing down your rollout. It's even better if they already have these pathways laid out.
Do not underestimate the value of security in the APAC region, especially since some parts of it are high-fraud environments. Look for PCI DSS certification, tokenisation, and risk engines that use machine learning. Built-in support for 3DS and tools for managing chargebacks and velocity rules might come in handy when a customer becomes prey to an attempted scamming.
Whether you're building on a custom stack or using an e-commerce platform, clean APIs and SDKs matter. It's also important to have the means to test your systems via sandboxing, test wallets, and responsive support.
You’ll want clear insight into how your payments perform. If the provider can't provide real-time data on authorisation rates, decline reasons, and chargebacks, it's not worth it. Smart routing and retry logic might also pull back that person who decided to back out of a purchase at the last minute. More than that, data like this can allow you to hyper-optimise your marketing to target and re-target the undecided buyers.
These are just some of the most high-traffic countries in the APAC region, and already, they cover over twenty different payment methods. While there are efforts in certain countries to try and integrate, it doesn't eliminate the problem across multiple countries.
|
Country |
Key payment methods |
|
China |
Alipay, WeChat Pay, UnionPay |
|
India |
UPI, Paytm, PhonePe |
|
Singapore |
PayNow, credit cards, GrabPay |
|
Thailand |
PromptPay, TrueMoney Wallet |
|
Malaysia |
Touch’n Go, ShopeePay, GrabPay |
|
Philippines |
GCash, Maya, InstaPay |
|
Indonesia |
OVO, Dana, GoPay, QRIS |
In some cases, fast cross-border setups might mean that you get a jump on the market, but it often costs more. A hybrid model (launching cross-border and localising later, on the other hand can give you some breathing room before committing to licensing and legal setups.
Using a payment gateway that has local banking partners can make things much, much smoother. It can also give you access to exclusive payment methods that may not be available via global schemes.
Look for features like retry logic, smart routing, tokenisation, and support for subscriptions. These matter more as volume grows and customer expectations increase.
Smart routing and a low-latency UX are the solution for real-time wallet payments and high-volume processing. In layman's terms, this just means your provider needs to lay out the smoothest possible path to payment.
Multi-seller platforms need split payouts, robust reconciliation, and support for local wallets. Combined payment solutions can help with checkout consolidation. Not only is this more convenient for the customer, but it's also convenient for your business.
If there's any market that absolutely needs smooth international transactions, it's this one. Businesses in this industry can benefit greatly from local acquiring, as it reduces decline rates on high-value purchases. Refund support and flexible settlement options are also incredibly important as they let consumers feel at ease.
Any business that has a subscription model requires auto-debit support, strong dunning features, and multi-currency billing. Tokenisation will also reduce churn from failed payments.
Begin your journey into the Asia-Pacific region now with Antom, helping growing businesses to take root in these regions and scale internationally. Contact us so we can start planning together.