Stripe is planning to expand its business in Southeast Asia, China, India, and Japan

• Stripe announced plans to expand its business in Southeast Asia, China, India, and Japan.
• The expansion would allow the firm to leverage ecommerce and digital payments growth throughout Asia-Pacific.
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The digital payments firm said it plans to ramp up expansion efforts in Southeast Asia (SEA), China, India, and Japan, per Reuters. Stripe has boosted its staff in Asia-Pacific by 40% so far this year, up to 200 employees, and it’s continuing on its hiring spree as it looks to bring in engineers.

The firm already had a presence in the region—it set up regional headquarters in Singapore in 2016 and launched an interbank transfers pilot program in Indonesia in early 2020—but is now looking to complete a full-scale entry. Stripe’s Asia-Pacific business lead Noah Pepper said that the firm is working to adapt its business to each country’s laws and regional payment preferences.

Asia-Pacific is a hotspot for digital payments—making it an ideal region for Stripe to move further into. The region saw global noncash transactions grow nearly 25% in 2019, reaching a value of $243.6 billion—far outpacing growth and volume in Europe and North America, according to Capgemini’s 2020 World Payments Report.

And the coronavirus pandemic has helped accelerate digital payment trends in 2020, like the enablement of card payments for small businesses. Further, in recent months, regulators throughout the region have looked to standardize digital payments infrastructure to foster more growth.

Asia-Pacific has a substantial ecommerce presence, with players like Alibaba, Shoppee, and Rakuten dominating the region, presenting an opportunity for Stripe to power those payments. These developments make Asia-Pacific an appealing region for Stripe to expand further into, especially since the digital shift is expected to continue into coming years.

Stripe can become a leader in Asia-Pacific’s digital payments landscape—here’s how it can meet local payment needs and drive up growth.

• Southeast Asia: The region has attained high digital penetration—40 million people came online for the first time as a result of the coronavirus pandemic—and is currently undergoing a major digital transformation across its payments landscape. Those factors, combined with the overall recent shift toward digital payments, make SEA a potentially lucrative market for Stripe—and the region’s popular food delivery and ride-hailing sectors present the company with an even greater opportunity to grow the region’s digital payments landscape.
• China: Thanks to the nation’s well-developed digital payment infrastructure, which includes major ecommerce giants like Alibaba and JD.com, the country offers Stripe an opportunity to cash in on the space, specifically in niche payment sectors that local players have yet to tap into. And because the country is beginning to open to foreign firms, Stripe can try to be an early market entrant.
• India: The country’s ecommerce sector has been on the rise, with online retail sales expected to reach $119.99 billion by 2024. With ecommerce players like Flipkart, JioMart, and Amazon—one of Stripe’s partners—looking to capitalize on India’s growing internet penetration, Stripe has a key opportunity to meet the digital payment needs for those firms.
• Japan: Stripe is already drawing appeal from Japanese merchants that want to cut payment processing times. And given that ecommerce and card payments saw significant growth throughout the pandemic—which is likely to continue into 2021—the firm can work toward forging partnerships to help enable faster payments.

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