Simplifying Cross-Border Payments for a Connected Travel Ecosystem 

As global travel continues to rebound, payment complexity has become one of the defining challenges for online travel agencies, airlines, and hospitality brands across the Asia Pacific region. With differing regulations, currencies, and local payment preferences shaping each market, building a frictionless, cost-effective payment experience has never been more critical. 

Juspay Technologies is among the companies leading this transformation, helping travel and ecommerce merchants simplify cross-border transactions through advanced payment orchestration and localised infrastructure. By combining technology, scale, and deep regional expertise, Juspay enables global enterprises to optimise authorisation rates, lower costs, and deliver seamless customer experiences across markets. 

Mariel Laxamana, Marketing Director of Payments Consulting Network and Merchant Advisory, spoke with Nakul Kothari, Head of APAC and the Middle East, to discuss how Juspay is helping merchants orchestrate cross-border payments and prepare for the next era of intelligent, seamless commerce. 

Read the full interview below. 

Mariel Laxamana: Please provide a brief high-level overview of your business. 

Nakul Kothari: Juspay is a full-stack payments technology company powering over 500 global enterprise merchants, including leaders such as Agoda, HSBC, and Amazon. Founded in 2012, Juspay processes more than 300 million transactions daily, offering a unified platform that covers payment orchestration, local payment methods, risk management, authentication, and checkout experiences. 

Headquartered in India with regional offices in Singapore, the UAE, Ireland, Brazil, and the US, Juspay builds the payments infrastructure that enables merchants to simplify, unify, and scale globally. 

 

ML: What payments services do you offer merchants and not-for-profit organisations? 

NK: We offer a full suite of payment services to businesses, banks, and fintechs including Payment Orchestration, Connectivity with Local Payment Methods, Checkout Enhancements, 3DS Optimisation, Offers & Promotion Engine, Payments Observability, and Automated Reconciliation. 

These capabilities help organisations increase authorisation rates, enhance user experience, and reduce operational and transaction costs  all while maintaining enterprise-grade reliability and compliance. 

 

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

NK: We partner with high-growth, high-volume digital businesses across travel, e-commerce, mobility, OTT, and financial services. In recent years, we’ve built deep expertise in travel payments spanning airlines, hospitality, and online travel agencies, enabling seamless experiences across multiple markets, currencies, acquirers, and ecosystem partners such as GDS and PMS. 

 

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

NK: Juspay operates one of the largest real-time payment orchestration platforms globally, with 99.999% uptime and the ability to process over 50,000 transactions per second at peak load. 

Our developer-first flexibility allows merchants to integrate new acquirers, wallets, or alternative payment methods in weeks rather than months, reinforcing our strengths in scale, reliability, and flexibility. 

 

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

NK: What sets Juspay apart is its depth of engineering and end-to-end orchestration capability enabling merchants to scale faster, operate more efficiently, and deliver seamless experiences globally.

• True Orchestration – Beyond PSP aggregation: unified routing, risk, and settlement intelligence across more than 300 acquirers and alternative payment methods. 
• Merchant-First Engineering – Rapid customisation, agile delivery, and transparent cost optimisation. 
• End-to-End Reliability – 200 million+ daily transactions with 99.999% uptime and built-in compliance (PCI DSS, Tokenisation, 3DS2). 
• Deep Travel Capability – Native integration with GDS, PMS, NDC, and travel-specific workflows. 

 

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

NK: In the past year, we have expanded operations across APAC, the Middle East, Europe and the UK, LATAM, and the US. We have also deepened our travel-focused capabilities, simplifying cross-border payments for global travel enterprises. 

This expansion has led to several leading airlines, hospitality groups, and OTAs adopting our platform. 

 

ML: What merchant services innovations do you have on your product or service roadmap for the next 12 months? 

NK: Our focus lies on two key areas: 

• Building the Travel Payments Platform — a unified stack that simplifies payments for travel businesses across geographies. 
• AI-Driven Product Capabilities — we believe the future of payments is frictionless, orchestrated, and agentic. Juspay is investing in AI systems that will power the payments infrastructure of tomorrow. 

 

ML: What industry changes or trends do you see occurring over the next 2–3 years that will have a major impact on your business and/or your clients? 

NK: As travel and cross-border commerce continue to expand, businesses will prioritise interoperable, low-cost, and localised payment flows. 

At an industry level, AI and agentic payments will become mainstream, with intelligent systems automating routing, fraud prevention, and cost optimisation. 

 

ML: What key criteria or features should a business consider when evaluating payments service providers? 

NK: Scalability and uptime, flexibility, transparency, global coverage, and compliance and security. 

 

ML: Juspay has grown significantly in the digital payments space. How is the platform helping businesses streamline cross-border transactions, especially within the APAC region? 

NK: Cross-border payments in APAC remain fragmented due to varying regulations, localised payment preferences, FX controls, and PSP infrastructures. Juspay’s payment infrastructure standardises this complexity, enabling merchants to: 

• Route transactions to local acquirers for higher authorisation rates 
• Settle in preferred currencies to reduce costs 
• Enable local payment methods for better customer experience 
• Manage FX and reconciliation seamlessly all through a single integration 

This unified approach significantly reduces transaction costs and failure rates, while improving user experience and settlement visibility. 

 

ML: As Head of APAC and the Middle East, what specific innovations or strategies from Juspay are you most excited about for driving growth and adoption across these markets? 

NK: We are localising global orchestration by building payment stacks that feel local in every country while staying globally consistent. 

Our goal is to build a unified travel payments infrastructure by working with GDS, PMS, IATA, and local banks and PSPs across markets from Australia and Thailand to the UAE and KSA creating a network that combines efficiency with global reach. This collaboration will unlock the next phase of merchant growth. 

 

ML: You spoke at the MAG Summit Singapore on Optimising Cross-Border Payments for Seamless APAC Expansion. What did attendees take away from your session? 

NK: The session explored how merchants can reduce costs and improve authorisation rates by designing smarter cross-border payment stacks. 

We shared real case studies from travel and ecommerce brands, discussed emerging orchestration models, and outlined how AI and tokenisation are redefining payment efficiency across APAC. 

 

ML: How do you see cross-border payment solutions evolving in the next few years, and what role will Juspay play in shaping this future? 

NK: Cross-border payments are shifting from reactive processing to proactive orchestration systems that learn, adapt, and optimise in real time. 

Juspay is enabling this transition through agentic orchestration, combining AI, data intelligence, and local infrastructure to make global payments as seamless as domestic transactions. Our goal is to make cross-border commerce faster, cheaper, and more transparent for every merchant. 

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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. Her responsibilities include managing and growing content and conference partnerships, planning and executing the content calendar across blogs, social media, and email campaigns, as well as designing, editing, and publishing newsletters. She also leads website management and design, ensuring alignment with brand strategy and user experience best practices. 

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Nakul Kothari 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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Juspay is a member of our Payments Orchestration Panel. 

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