Stripe expands global infrastructure to support APAC’s ‘incredible’ growth

“At the end of the day, good infrastructure is built and in place before that market activity really starts to inflect.”

In celebration of a decade in Asia, Stripe will expand its multi-currency treasury capabilities and introduce new managed and cross-border payment methods to support the expansion of Asia Pacific businesses.

The vendor launched new money management capabilities at Stripe Tour Singapore and aims to bring the full Stripe Treasury experience to Singapore by early 2027.

With Stripe Treasury, revenue from international sales will be available instantly for paying suppliers, contractors, and third parties in nearly 100 countries with just an email address. Businesses will be able to receive and store funds in SGD, USD, AUD, GBP and EUR.

“We have spent the last 15 years kind of perfecting payments and being really good at that,” said Abhi Tiwari, Head of Product, Global at Stripe. “With our announcement today, we’re really trying to bring a complete financial infrastructure where you're not just stopping at payments, you're [thinking] how do I actually think about this in a way that I can pay suppliers [and] manage this at scale for my business.”

APAC firms ‘deeply localized’, at incredible growth stage

In a media briefing, Sarita Singh, Stripe’s Regional Head and Managing Director for Southeast Asia, Greater China and South Korea shared how customers and partners here are hungry to grow ‘very quickly’, be it to scale the business or adopt transformative AI technologies.

“Organizations here want to be ‘glocal’,” said Singh. “So taking all the best from the globe but making it deeply, deeply localized.”

She reflected on how APAC used to be a region of “order takers” or mere consumers of technology, but has since become at the forefront of innovation.

“Our markets [and] our user behaviors are moving this technology ahead,” she said.

She shared that Stripe conducts plenty of feedback and closed-loop activities with users, prospects, and the general market. They then work with regulators and partners to determine what solutions need to be built.

Revenue numbers on Stripe’s platform also help to signal which direction the vendor chooses to move. For example, Singapore AI companies that are built on Stripe have seen an increase in their revenue of 245% year-on-year, shared Singh.

“This is just incredible growth, which I think is just a small reflection of this appetite to adopt and grow,” she said.

Customers here have also shown a deep interest in agentic AI, according to Singh.

“Across Asia Pacific the demand from companies and from merchants to prepare their businesses for this wave of agentic AI is definitely something that we’re seeing increasing,” she said.

“I’m spending [a lot of time] talking to people about how they prepare their businesses for the changing consumer trends that they're seeing before that market inflection actually happens, because at the end of the day good infrastructure is built and in place before that market activity really starts to inflect.”

Partners critical in helping Stripe scale

This is why Singh sees its technology partners as vital in offering a ‘glocal’ experience to customers.

“When we think about the role that partners play, they give us a lot more scale across the region,” she told CRN Asia. “They also give us this localization, whether that’s in the fiat part of the business or the stablecoins part of the business. They give us access and entry to markets [and] users.”

Stripe works closely with partners across the region, shared Singh, to support customers through implementations as well as overall sales efforts.

“When we’re doing the implementations or integrations and the support, as well as through the sales process [with users], we’re working with partners and really the end-to-end sort of sales development and support cycles,” she said.

“There’s so much opportunity here in this part of the world for Stripe […] We do see our expansion in this region as fundamentally something we’re going to do with key partners, whether they be alliances and channels type of partners or even our financial partners.”