The region’s rapidly growing cross-border e-commerce market was expected to reach over USD 76 billion by 2030, with merchants increasingly selling to customers worldwide. However, meeting international demand meant navigating complex licensing requirements and managing multiple PSP connections, which undermined payment performance and slowed time-to-market.
As the merchant of record for Southeast Asian businesses selling overseas, HitPay handled cross-border payment processing, compliance, and settlement on behalf of merchants based in markets such as Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, enabling them to sell to customers in the US and Europe.
In Southeast Asia, where MSMEs constituted 97% of all businesses, the push for international expansion became a strategic necessity. In Singapore, local businesses were encouraged to be ‘born global’ to secure high-value partnerships with MNCs, utilising government grants to scale beyond their home borders.
Malaysia intensified national efforts last year to raise MSME export contributions to 15%. Meanwhile, the Philippines reached a tipping point, where 32% of MSMEs expressed interest in enhancing their international presence this year.
Through Primer’s unified infrastructure, Singapore-based HitPay accessed local acquirers across key global markets, extending multi-currency card acceptance beyond the region while delivering the same high-performing, locally optimised payment experience for companies operating on the ground.
“Our merchants have evolved from serving primarily local customers to selling globally – from Southeast Asian exporters reaching the US, to travel and hospitality businesses attracting European customers. Accelerated access to new markets and local-level payment performance will be transformative for our fast-growing merchants. The integration was fast, with minimal engineering – but the impact has been immediate, especially in fast-growing segments like travel,” said Aditya Haripurkar, Co-founder and CEO of HitPay.
“Enabling merchants to scale internationally is still one of the hardest problems in payments. By partnering with HitPay, we’re opening new markets for their merchants and laying the foundation for long-term global expansion. This partnership shows how open, unified payments infrastructure can drive real growth for fintechs and the millions of businesses they power,” said Gabriel Le Roux, Co-founder and CEO of Primer.
A Two-Way Partnership Connecting Global Merchants to Southeast Asian Markets
The collaboration extended in both directions, with HitPay integrating into Primer as part of the new Primer for Partners Program. Launched last month, Primer for Partners allowed PSPs, APMs, and Fraud providers to build and manage their own integration onto the Primer platform, making their products available to any Primer merchant while benchmarking and monitoring their performance.
Offering one of the region’s most comprehensive portfolios of alternative payment methods, spanning more than 700 local payer options, the partnership gave Primer’s customers seamless access to new customers across Southeast Asia’s highly fragmented payments landscape without additional integrations.
“HitPay’s coverage across Southeast Asia is extensive. Pairing HitPay’s regional depth with Primer’s global infrastructure creates a two-way expansion model – connecting Southeast Asian merchants to the world, and global merchants to Southeast Asia,” added Le Roux.
For both companies, the partnership marked the beginning of a broader collaboration focused on replacing payment complexity with resilient infrastructure, giving merchants the confidence to expand internationally without sacrificing performance, control, or speed.
