EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW – Xendit Philippines Managing Director Yang Yang Zhang

Before Xendit, Ms. Zhang headed PDAX as its Founder & Chief Product/Strategy Officer

1. Xendit was able to raise $300 million alone from the series D funding, $62 million greater than the first three funding rounds combined. How does this translate vis-à-vis the confidence of your investors and market penetration? 

Our latest funding round is a testament to how investors see the SEA market. Xendit sees a lot of growth opportunities not just in our existing core markets and this drives our expansion plans beyond Indonesia and the Philippines. 

Specific to the Philippines, Xendit is fortunate to be operating in this space with a strong policy support by the government. We are in a good position to expand our business lines and drive inclusive growth. 

2. Can you share what were the major drivers that led to your company’s current position in terms of profitability?

Last year, Xendit grew its volume of payment transactions by 3x. Driven by the pandemic and the shift of business from traditional to digital, Xendit’s growth was driven by enterprises and SMEs. Xendit continues to launch first-to-market and world-class payment solutions together with our local partners in the Philippines.

Xendit’s portfolio of customers also diversified into other sectors, enabling growth overall despite slow down in some hard hit industries during the pandemic. 

3. Are there value-added services Xendit has in the pipeline? Can you describe how Direct Debit is doing in the Philippines?

Xendit goes beyond just payments processing and offers other business solutions such as fraud risk management too (xenshield), marketplace management (xenplatform) and data products. Specific to fueling the Philippine digital economy, Xendit also understands the importance of access to capital so we look forward to offering b2b loans to our merchant customers as well.

Direct debit continues to grow exponentially with a strong base of customers from ecommerce, financial services, subscription services and mobile wallet top ups. This product helps customers check out seamlessly with the convenience of one click payment flow. 

From the merchant’s perspective, businesses are able to cater to more customers who don’t necessarily have credit cards by allowing buyers to use their bank accounts to pay online. 

4. What component of the digital economy are you planning to address next?

Xendit’s goal is to make sure that all the players in the ecosystem are given the opportunity to use technology to do their business and day to day operations efficiently. Xendit is working on co-creating solutions and applications to help customers transform the way they do their business.  

5. We know that Xendit is focused on regionalization over going public, can you share what the company has been doing in its expansion initiatives? 

Xendit stays true to its mission to build infrastructure in the SEA market; and so we are eyeing Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand as potential new markets. We build what our customers want and in parallel, we head where our customers need us to go in SEA.

6. Are we going to see more investments in local institutions like Bank Sahabat Sampoerna?

Xendit is always on the lookout for the next strategic investment; we started this with Dragonpay. 

With our recent funding round, we doubled down on the PH by empowering local businesses not just with payments and value added services — but also by putting our capital directly into other Philippines startups in fintech and other verticals.