Two Cofounders of Xendit on Pioneering Fintech in Southeast Asia

The payments platform company Xendit came to life with a pivot. Its founders first built a product that would allow individuals to exchange funds--like Venmo but with more privacy--and then rolled out a simple business-to-consumer interface, similar to a pared-down version of Shopify. But they soon realized that such apps couldn't be successful without an infrastructure for digital transactions and banking. They'd already built an internal system to ensure quick and seamless incoming and outgoing payments, so they decided to offer it externally to speed transactions from bank to business and business to business, easing a significant pain point for enterprises of all sizes in the region. In the years since, they've maintained month-over-month revenue growth of more than 10% and expanded from a few dozen employees to more than 1,000 distributed around the world. And in its latest funding round Xendit achieved a valuation of more than $1 billion. Its leaders are taking the lessons learned in the company's earliest years--know your market, stay nimble, prioritize talent and culture--to overcome new challenges, from the Covid-19 pandemic to the war in Ukraine. Their ethos is to move fast but thoughtfully, working product by product and country by country, to build and strengthen Southeast Asia's digital economy.