Xendit, an online payment solutions platform, is now in the Philippines
The pandemic truly changed the landscape of commerce. In a span of just a few months, normal commerce that only offered online transactions as an option found out that it no longer was just a nice-to-have feature but a critical MUST. In fact, the volume of digital transactions surged as soon as the lockdown in March happened.
There are currently several online platforms that cater to e-commerce but now, Filipinos now have still another option when it comes to online payments. Xendit, an Indonesian-based digital payments platform, is now in the Philippines.
What is Xendit?
Xendit is a payment gateway. It was established in Indonesia in 2015 and since then has become a leading name for Indonesian businesses and customers when it comes to digital payments. Xendit serves not only local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) but also some of Indonesia’s largest tech startups as well as some of the world’s largest businesses.
Moses Lo, Xendit Group CEO and Founder, presented the background of Xendit. They are already doing around USD 5 billion in total payments volume annually, over 65 million annual transactions, and growing at an average of 10% for the last 36 months. They were the 5th Southeast Asian (SEA) investment of Y Combinator (YC), a venture capital fund for startups, and responsible for other successful startups like Dropbox, Airbnb. They also got seed money from two other venture capital funds: Accel Partners and Kleiner Perkins.
According to Moses, the Philippines was a natural choice for Xendit. One, the local regulators were open to innovation. Two, the Philippine economy was on the verge of hypergrowth. And three, customers were actually telling Xendit to come to the Philippines.
Yang Yang Zhang, the head of Xendit Philippines, also reinforced what Moses said by saying that when the pandemic hit, she saw how businesses suddenly had to fast track their digital transformation and adopt digital transactions.
What are some of the transactions available on Xendit?
Here’s a slide from Moses Lo showing Xendit’s suite of products arranged by service type. It remains to be seen if all of these will be activated for the Philippines but it’s good to know they have actually developed all these.
The Philippine Experience with Xendit
At the blogger event, we got to hear from three local partners of Xendit who let us know how they were using, or plan to use, Xendit for their businesses.
No. 1: GrabPay (with Direct Debit)
Jonathan Bates, head of GrabPay Philippines, said that the GrabPay wallet uses Xendit Direct Debit. Customers use it to link their bank accounts just once to seamlessly top up their GrabPay balance. This first-to-market product, now live for BPI, UnionBank, and (soon!) BDO, lets customers link their bank accounts for both one-time and recurring payments, secured by successful completion of two-factor authentication (2FA). Once that is done, customers can just transfer money 24/7 from their bank account to GrabPay with a few taps.
Just imagine the convenience. GrabPay top-ups used to require you to first log in to your bank account to transfer money to GrabPay; or you had to go out to a 7-11, Cebuana Lhuillier, or some other outlet, hand your cash to them so your GrabPay could be topped up. All that is eliminated now by using Xendit. You do not need to even leave the Grab app.
Jonathan also gave a sneak peek of how easy it will be for BDO customers to link their bank accounts to Grab Pay (coming soon!) These next 2 slides show how to first link the BDO account and next, cash in.
No. 2: Tara! (contact tracing + contactless payments)
As lockdowns ease, families want to go out for staycations. But filling up paper health forms is such a drag when you have to do it multiple times. Carlo Almendral, CEO of Tara! app explained that the app lets you create a QR code by just filling up the health form once on the app and you can use that QR code wherever there is an establishment able to scan QR codes.
At the same time, local merchants can leverage the Tara! QR code for their businesses by letting customers scan the merchant’s QR code for contactless payments, even in-store. These are enabled by Xendit.
Carlo, who calls himself a privacy and ethics nerd, also said that Tara! deletes people’s data after 30 days and says Xendit also has strong data privacy policies. Tara! is currently being tested in San Juan, Batangas and will be launched soon.
No. 3: Oriente SEA
Macy Castillo, Regional Director of Oriente SEA, spelled out their partnership with Xendit.
This partnership spans the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Oriente’s mission is to create financial inclusion. Oriente is set to offer 3 different features for SMEs through Xendit and another partner, Cashalo: 1) providing working capital to SMEs through the payment gateway, 2) allowing merchants to offer Buy Now, Pay Later option for their customers, and the digitization of SMEs.
Is Xendit in competition with GCash, PayMaya and other e-wallet companies?
Xendit says they DO NOT see themselves in competition with e-wallets companies. Rather, they view themselves as valuable partners. They consider themselves the highways while the e-wallet companies are the skyscrapers. They want to be the single digital platform for all these e-wallet companies without having to integrate each one.
There we go! Businesses, from MSMEs to large corporations will find that Xendit’s technically advanced but user-friendly process allows them to easily send and receive payments. Xendit’s product portfolio allows businesses to quickly get on the digital platform without disrupting their business, expand their reach to even more digital customers, and provide digital payment options for these customers
