The evolving payments landscape across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia continues to reshape how businesses scale, localise, and optimise the customer experience. For this Q&A, Mariel Laxamana, Marketing Director at Payments Consulting Network and Merchant Advisory, invited Monique Biady, Head of Commercial, Australia & New Zealand at Checkout.com, to share insights on regional growth opportunities, payment performance strategies, and the role of modern infrastructure in supporting merchants expanding into Southeast Asia’s diverse markets. 

In the following responses, Monique outlines the trends influencing payment innovation, challenges faced by businesses operating across multiple markets, and the strategic approach Checkout.com brings to the digital economy. 

Read the full interview below. 

Mariel Laxamana: As Head of ANZ & Singapore Commercial, what unique opportunities and challenges do you see in driving Checkout.com’s growth across these markets? 

Monique Biady: These three markets represent distinct challenges – due to varying customer payment preferences, real-time payments adoption, and differing regulatory landscapes – but what they share is a universal desire from businesses to reduce payment friction for their customers. This is where we come in. We like to say we’re the only company that does not want to be noticed because when we’ve done our job, that means a payment has been made completely seamlessly. 

Singapore is strategically crucial, acting not only as a high-growth market but also as our gateway for scaling across the wider Southeast Asian (SEA) region.  

Meanwhile, in Australia, businesses are actively making infrastructure upgrades and embracing innovation to pre-empt the upcoming regulatory changes. 

Our primary opportunity lies in capitalising on the digital maturity of merchants, ready to move on from slow legacy systems – by providing them with a superior platform that delivers high acceptance rates and granular, real-time data.  

ML: How are you working with merchants in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore to help them scale effectively across Southeast Asia? 

MB: Our approach is focused on performance-driven scaling. For merchants targeting SEA, the first step is enabling hyper-localised acceptance, particularly through local acquiring, which is critical for unlocking cost savings and significantly boosting authorisation rates.  

For merchants targeting Australia, we leverage our robust global network and local expertise to offer tailored solutions, ensure regulatory compliance, and provide a seamless checkout experience crucial for maximising revenue in this mature market. 

Crucially, Checkout.com’s full-stack platform is built to maximise acceptance by running the entirety of the transaction on our rails, giving merchants a distinct advantage with market-leading authorisation rates that translate directly to revenue growth. 

Ultimately, reducing customer friction is paramount. Our data suggests over a third of consumers will abandon their cart after just one payment failure – a risk amplified by the high smartphone penetration and on-the-go transactions common across SEA. We also see high demand from Australian businesses to replace legacy payment solutions that are unable to keep pace with the rapid e-commerce growth in Australia. 

ML: You spoke on the panel Engineered to Scale: Build Payments for Southeast Asia’s Digital Future at the MAG Summit Singapore. What key themes or insights were discussed? 

MB: I was lucky enough to speak with payments leaders from Grab and Shopee – two industry titans that have fundamentally shaped the digital economy in SEA. We discussed what it takes to operate at a massive scale in the region, navigating the fragmented payments landscape while managing complex payment ecosystems within their respective businesses. 

While hyper-localisation was agreed to be the ideal strategy, we discussed the strategic trade-offs: 

• Offering infinite payment rails to be hyper-localised for consumer preference is ideal, but businesses have to be ready to handle the increased operational lift. 
• When considering building payment infrastructure in-house vs. leveraging external partners, you may be gaining more control, but you likely lose network effects and expertise (compared to the scale of a global provider). 
• Balancing security with seamlessness – determining the right amount of friction to introduce to keep bad actors out, without preventing legitimate customers from transacting. 

ML: In your view, what are the most important factors businesses should consider when building scalable payment systems to capture Southeast Asia’s digital growth? 

MB: The single most important factor is platform flexibility, ensuring a system is modular and API-driven so it can easily absorb new markets, regulations, and emerging payment technologies without costly engineering overhauls. 

A strong data foundation is also critical. This allows businesses to understand underlying shifts in customer preference – for instance, interoperable QR codes and wallets dominate in emerging SEA, while cards remain king in Singapore. A solid data suite also allows you to quickly identify spikes in fraud or dips in conversion at a granular level – by payment type, region, issuing bank, and more – all in service of better payments performance. 

A good payment solution provider will act as a trusted partner, helping you track and monitor all these data points to build actionable payment performance strategies. 

ML: Please provide a high-level overview of your business and geographic coverage. 

MB: Checkout.com is a global digital payments company. Our global digital payments network supports over 145 currencies and delivers high-performance payment solutions across the world. We process billions of transactions every year, helping merchants boost acceptance rates, reduce costs, and combat fraud. 

With the global digital economy estimated to be growing 2.5 times faster than physical world GDP, our focus on digital-first payments has seen us continue to grow our revenue. Checkout exited 2024 profitably, after achieving 45% net revenue growth for its core business, and is on track to exceed its target of 30% net revenue growth in 2025. 

Headquartered in London and with 19 offices worldwide, Checkout.com is trusted by leading brands such as HelloFresh, ASOS, eBay, Uber, Pinterest, Vinted, Klarna, Financial Times, and Sony. 

ML: What payment services do you offer businesses and not-for-profits? 

MB: Our mission is to help businesses thrive in the digital economy. We do this by enabling merchants to connect and move money over a global payments network. This enables them to protect their businesses from fraud, ensure compliance, boost payment performance, and manage funds – all through one integration. 

Checkout.com is a full-stack acquiring payment provider, which means we offer merchants a payments gateway, processor, and acquiring under one roof. We also offer value-added services in the form of risk tools, issuing, and funds management. 

ML: Are there any industry sectors or client types that you focus on for merchant services? 

MB: Checkout.com processes payments for thousands of companies that shape the digital economy. Our core industries are e-commerce and fintech, which make up over 95% of our volumes. 

We partner with the world’s largest businesses shaping the digital economy now and in the future, including HelloFresh, ASOS, eBay, Uber, Pinterest, Vinted, Klarna, Financial Times, and Sony. 

ML: What do you see as your key strengths with respect to merchant services? 

MB: The digital economy, which is fundamental to our future world, is transforming the relationships consumers have with brands. At the heart of the online shopping experience is the payment process, which is critical to driving conversion and ultimately building brand loyalty. Our research has revealed that 82% of consumers will only buy from brands they trust and 73% see a smooth, reliable payment experience as a clear signal that a brand is trustworthy. 

Payments are complex and constantly evolving. We manage that complexity on behalf of our clients by continuously improving performance for our merchants – that’s how we help them thrive in the digital economy. 

ML: What do you see as your key differentiators with respect to merchant services? 

MB: Our foundational expertise is in high-performing digital payments. We focus on helping businesses that rely on digital channels to achieve exceptional payment performance through high authorisation rates, low fraud, and seamless customer experiences. 

One of our core differentiators is that we believe in the power of an open network. Merchants can use our services with multiple payment service providers, giving them greater visibility and control over their payments. 

Our technology is modular, which means that merchants can build a payments stack that best meets their individual needs, with the flexibility to add in or remove functionalities as their business grows. 

Merchants get value from our network through compound insights captured across the whole of our network. By using the billions of transactions processed across our network and machine learning, we provide actionable insights that help individual merchants boost their payment performance. 

We are also committed to transparency of data and allowing merchants to access data and analytics through the interfaces that work for them, to help inform their businesses. We provide insights to our merchants via our dashboard and bespoke reporting to help them improve their performance. 

ML: What were your key achievements over the last 12 months? 

MB: We’ve marked a pivotal year defined by disciplined growth and major enterprise wins. 

Financial strength and corporate momentum 

We accelerated toward full-year profitability and are on track to exceed our target of 30% net revenue growth in 2025. This financial health led to a new USD 12 billion valuation and the announcement of an employee share buy-back programme, underscoring our confidence in the business. We now process billions of transactions annually and are seeing our focus on digital-first payments pay off, with our US business alone growing over 80% in the last year. 

Major enterprise wins 

We secured landmark global partnerships that validate our technology at the highest level. 

• We were selected by Uber as a strategic global payments partner, providing acquiring and gateway services across their ridesharing and delivery platforms. 
• We signed a deal to power global digital payments for HelloFresh across all 18 markets. 

Product and innovation 

Checkout.com strategically invested in new capabilities including: 

• Visa Intelligent Commerce 
• Mastercard Agent Pay 
• Support for Google’s Agent Payment Protocol (AP2) 

These tools help agents transact safely on behalf of consumers, ensuring a seamless experience. 

We launched Flow as a standalone service, delivering a 5% uplift in acceptance rates, and introduced Standalone Vault for secure data storage and token management. 

Strategic partnerships and expansion 

We reached a significant milestone in our US expansion with our application for a Georgia MALPB Charter accepted. We also became the first global digital payments provider to offer Octopus in Hong Kong online. Finally, we launched a collaboration with the Merchant Risk Council (MRC) to help tackle cybersecurity threats and fraud. 

ML: What innovations do you have on your roadmap over the next 12 months? 

MB: Our roadmap for 2026 focuses on: 

• Expanding direct acquiring in key markets. 
• AI-led innovation, including enhancements to Intelligent Acceptance and Authentication, and development of Agentic Commerce solutions. 
• Driving modular product adoption (Vault, Flow, Issuing). 
• New financial experiences for merchants, such as Accelerated Settlement and Business Account. 
• ISV platform launch in 2026. 
• Enhanced merchant dashboard and analytics experience. 

ML: What industry changes or trends do you see emerging over the next 2–3 years? 

MB: Key shifts include: 

• Growth of digital wallets and alternative payment methods. 
• Increasing regulatory changes demanding frictionless yet secure payment experiences. 
• Rapid adoption of AI and agentic commerce, where smart assistants handle discovery and purchasing. 
• Rising fraud risks driving adoption of advanced security measures such as transaction risk analysis. 

Our agentic commerce research found that 47% of consumers plan to use an AI agent for Christmas shopping and 33% for Black Friday purchases. 

ML: What key criteria should businesses consider when evaluating payment service providers? 

MB:  

• A bespoke offering tailored to specific business needs. 
• Availability of a test account to simulate payments and validate performance. 
• Openness and transparency around data access and analytics. 
• A partner with true scale and reach to navigate local payment methods and regulatory environments. 
• A multi-provider approach for better resilience, continuity, and optimisation through routing. 

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Author: Mariel Laxamana, Marketing Director, Manila, Payments Consulting Network and Merchant Advisory 

Mariel brings over 14 years of professional experience spanning news production, events, client servicing, and digital marketing. She began her career managing newscasts for a leading television network in the Philippines and now leads the digital marketing team at Payments Consulting Network, overseeing the global digital presence for both PCN and Merchant Advisory. 

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Monique Biady spoke at MAG Payments Summit – Singapore 25. 

The MAG’s International Summits will be back again next year: 

• MAG Payments Summit – London 26: 9–10 June 2026 
• MAG Payments Summit – Singapore 26: 20–21 October 2026 

Stay informed about the latest news, updates, and industry insights from the MAG by subscribing to the MAG Insights page. 

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Checkout.com is a member of our Payment Service Provider Panel. 

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