Cross-border payments provider EBANX enters five new Asian markets, targeting a $610 billion digital commerce opportunity

The Brazilian-founded fintech is now live in Indonesia, Thailand, and Turkey, with Malaysia and Vietnam to follow this quarter, betting that fragmented local payment infrastructure is its competitive moat, not its obstacle.

Cross-border payments specialist EBANX has launched operations in five new markets, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Turkey, bringing its active footprint in Asia to seven countries, including India and the Philippines. The combined digital commerce addressable market across those seven economies is estimated at $610 billion, according to data from Payments and Commerce Market Intelligence (PCMI) and World Data Lab (WDL), with the five new additions representing $349 billion of that figure.

The move extends EBANX's geographic axis well beyond Latin America and Africa, where the company built its initial infrastructure after its 2012 founding in Brazil. With a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence now secured from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and a regional headquarters officially opened in Singapore, the company has established the regulatory foundations for sustained Asia-Pacific expansion.

Which markets are growing fastest and what does that mean for merchants?

Vietnam leads the five new entrants on growth rate: PCMI projects its digital commerce market will expand at a 22% compound annual rate through 2027, rising from $36 billion to $44 billion. Indonesia follows at 19% ($106 billion to $125 billion), while Turkey, Malaysia, and Thailand post projected growth of 15%, 16%, and 15% respectively. Turkey's absolute market size, $123 billion today, heading to $142 billion, is the largest in the cohort.

Market	2024 Market Size	2027 Projection	CAGR
Vietnam	$36B	$44B	22%
Indonesia	$106B	$125B	19%
Malaysia	~$60B	est.	16%
Turkey	$123B	$142B	15%
Thailand	~$50B	est.	15%

For global merchants, the significance runs beyond raw market size. Cross-border transactions already account for 30% of e-commerce volume in Thailand and Malaysia, and 28% in the Philippines, suggesting that international demand is a structural feature of these markets, not a peripheral use case.

"Global companies are no longer asking about the region's potential; they are asking how to unlock that potential and achieve high conversion rates."

Eduardo de Abreu, Chief Product Officer and regional CEO, EBANX Singapore

Why did Southeast Asia skip cards and why does that matter for conversion?

Unlike the U.S. or Western Europe, where credit card rails became the default infrastructure before mobile internet arrived, Southeast Asian consumers built their financial lives on smartphones first. The result is a payment landscape defined by e-wallets and account-to-account (A2A) transfers rather than card networks. According to PCMI data, those two methods combined account for 65% of e-commerce transactions in Thailand, 61% in Indonesia, and 50% in the Philippines.

WDL data cited in EBANX's Beyond Borders 2026 study adds a demographic dimension: Southeast Asia and India are the only regions globally where Generation Z holds the largest share of online spending, at 27% across all verticals, a cohort that has transacted digitally from the outset. Elsewhere in Asia, Generation X leads at 30%, nearly double Gen Z's 18% share in those markets.

For payment processors, this landscape presents both a challenge and a competitive barrier. A merchant with a card-centric checkout flow will encounter consistently low conversion rates in Thailand or Indonesia, not because of poor product-market fit, but because of payment method mismatch. EBANX says it will offer more than 20 integrated payment methods across its seven Asian markets, targeting this specific structural gap.

What's the strategic logic behind the Singapore headquarters?

The choice to anchor regional operations in Singapore rather than in a higher-growth market like Indonesia or Vietnam signals a regulatory and talent-access calculation. Singapore's MAS licensing framework is widely regarded as among the most rigorous in Asia, obtaining an MPI licence provides a credible compliance signal to both merchants and local financial institutions that EBANX operates to institutional standards. It also grants passporting-adjacent benefits for regional expansion discussions.

Eduardo de Abreu, appointed Chief Product Officer and regional CEO of EBANX Singapore, framed the headquarters as an "operational proximity" play: the ability to build country-by-country integrations, local wallets, QR-based payments, domestic bank transfers, requires resident teams who understand each market's regulatory and technical specifics, not remote infrastructure management.

"Asia is where the world's fastest-growing consumer base is, and also where some of the most ambitious digital companies are headquartered. The opportunity runs in both directions."

João Del Valle, Co-founder and CEO, EBANX

The "both directions" framing is notable. EBANX's public positioning has historically emphasised enabling global merchants to reach emerging-market consumers, a unidirectional flow from West to emerging markets. The explicit acknowledgment that Asian companies also need cross-border infrastructure to sell internationally positions the company as a two-sided enabler, potentially opening a B2B merchant acquisition channel among APAC-headquartered tech and commerce companies.

Why this matters to FinanceX readers

EBANX's expansion is a case study in how payment infrastructure gaps in high-growth emerging markets translate directly into merchant revenue leakage, and therefore into investment and partnership opportunity. With consumer spending in these five markets projected to grow 97% over the next decade, and with cross-border e-commerce already accounting for 28–30% of volumes in several of them, the structural demand for compliant, multi-method payment infrastructure is not speculative.

For investors in cross-border commerce enablement, and for enterprise finance leaders evaluating regional go-to-market strategy in Southeast Asia and Turkey, the payment method localisation challenge EBANX is addressing deserves close attention, particularly as competitors including Adyen, Stripe, and regional players like Xendit and 2C2P are staking out similar positions. The competitive differentiation will ultimately be determined by which provider achieves the deepest domestic integrations, not merely the broadest geographic footprint.

By Koen Vanderhoydonk - FinanceX Magazine