The Philippines sits on both sides of most international businesses' operations, and the infrastructure you need differs completely depending on which direction your money moves.
Selling into the Philippines means consumer checkout, and the market is unusually concentrated: two wallets reach almost everyone, one QR standard covers merchant acceptance, and cash remains stubbornly present.
Paying into the Philippines means disbursement to agencies, outsourcing providers, contractors, sellers and individuals. The Philippines is one of the world's largest services exporters, and over USD 30 billion flows in annually from overseas Filipino workers, which has made the receive-side rails some of the most developed in the region [1].
Most guides cover the first and ignore the second. This one covers both.
Both directions run through the same two wallets, which is why they come first.
The Philippines is the only ASEAN country where consumer e-wallets collectively hold higher monthly active usage than retail bank apps [1]. GCash has over 94 million registered users, and GCash plus Maya together reach roughly 95% of digitally active Filipinos [1][2].
GCash is the dominant wallet and, for a large share of the population, the primary financial account rather than a supplement to one. It handles payments, transfers, bill payments, and the disbursement of welfare payments, subsidies and inbound remittances [2]. For a consumer with no bank account, GCash is not a payment app. It is the account.
Maya (formerly PayMaya) skews toward banked consumers, with integrated savings, credit and payment features [2]. It serves a genuinely different user base rather than being a smaller copy of GCash, which is why the two together reach far more of the market than either alone.
ShopeePay and GrabPay fill the third tier, each strongest inside its own ecosystem [3].
GCash is the first integration and it is not optional. A checkout without it is inaccessible to the modal Philippine consumer in the way they normally pay [1][2]. Maya is the second, for the different segment it reaches.
QR Ph is the BSP-mandated interoperable merchant QR standard, working across GCash, Maya and participating banks from a single displayed code [2][3]. This is the same architectural choice as QRIS in Indonesia or SGQR in Singapore: the central bank preventing closed-loop QR fragmentation before it took hold. For in-person and QR-based acceptance, supporting QR Ph is more efficient than integrating wallet by wallet.
Cards remain necessary for higher-value purchases, corporate buyers and international customers, but they are not where consumer volume sits.
Cash is the part most international merchants underestimate. Digital wallets captured 41% of e-commerce value and 29% of point-of-sale value in 2025, while cash still accounted for 42% of in-store value [4]. The Global Payments Report 2026 identifies the Philippines as having the highest cash usage of any market it tracks in the region [4].
Those facts are not contradictory. They describe a market that has gone digital fast at the top and remains substantially cash-based underneath. The operational consequence is that cash-on-delivery and over-the-counter collection is not a legacy feature to sunset. A meaningful share of Philippine e-commerce orders still settle through one of those channels, and a checkout offering only wallets and cards will lose those orders rather than convert them.
This is where Dragonpay sits. It is a Philippine payment service provider built around bank transfers and a large network of physical collection points including 7-Eleven, serving customers who are unbanked or prefer cash, with fixed-fee structures that suit some transaction profiles better than percentage pricing [5].
What changed since Dragonpay was the default answer for international merchants is not Dragonpay itself. It is that the wallet tier grew enormously around it and the BSP built interoperable rails that did not previously exist. Over-the-counter collection is now one layer of a Philippine acceptance strategy rather than the foundation of one.
Here the governing fact is a number, and it catches more international teams than anything else in this market.
The BSP operates two interbank rails and they are not interchangeable.
InstaPay settles immediately and operates continuously, sitting underneath most send-to-bank and send-to-wallet flows. It is capped at PHP 50,000 per transaction [1].
PESONet clears in same-business-day batches rather than immediately, and it carries higher-value business payments precisely because it is not subject to that ceiling [1].
Most platforms operating here use InstaPay for retail-scale flows and PESONet for business-scale ones, and the choice is dictated by the limit rather than by preference [1].
Where this bites: a monthly contractor payment, an agency invoice, a supplier settlement or a marketplace seller payout with meaningful order values will routinely exceed PHP 50,000. A disbursement stack built on InstaPay alone will either fail those payments or split them, which creates reconciliation problems on the recipient side.
Wallet-destination payouts matter for anyone paying individuals. For a substantial share of the contractor and gig workforce, the wallet is the account and there is no bank account behind it. A payout stack that can only reach bank accounts will fail on a meaningful proportion of a Philippine contractor base, and the failure looks like onboarding drop-off rather than a technical error, because the payee cannot supply details they do not have.
Every payment service provider operating in the Philippines requires BSP authorisation [3]. For an international business this determines who can legally hold and move your funds in-market, and it is worth establishing before scoping an integration.
The practical question to resolve early is coverage. A provider with InstaPay access but no PESONet access has a hard ceiling on what it can disburse. A provider with bank rails but no wallet disbursement cannot pay a large share of the individual contractor base. A provider with wallet acceptance but no over-the-counter network will miss cash-preferring buyers.
If you sell into the Philippines: GCash first, Maya second, QR Ph for interoperable acceptance, cards for higher-value and international buyers, and an over-the-counter option because cash is 42% of in-store value and a real share of e-commerce settlement [1][4][5].
If you pay into the Philippines: confirm PESONet access, not just InstaPay, because the PHP 50,000 ceiling determines whether your payouts work at scale. Support wallet-destination payouts if you pay individuals [1].
If you do both: your provider needs to reach both rails, both wallets, and an over-the-counter network. That combination is less common than it sounds.
For businesses paying Philippine suppliers, sellers and contractors at scale, the rail split is the operational core of the integration. For businesses collecting from Philippine buyers, a named collection account gives each incoming payment an attribution rather than landing it in a pooled balance. For the wider regional picture, see our guide to payment methods across Southeast Asia.
[1] Kaadxpay. "Philippines Payments Guide: GCash, Maya, InstaPay & PESONet (2026)." April 2026. https://www.kaadxpay.com/en/countries/philippines
[2] HitPay. "Best Payment Gateway for GCash Philippines 2026." June 2026. https://hitpayapp.com/blog/best-payment-gateway-gcash-philippines
[3] HitPay. "Best Payment Gateway API in the Philippines 2026." July 2026. https://hitpayapp.com/blog/best-payment-gateway-api-philippines
[4] Fintech Singapore / Worldpay Global Payments Report 2026. "Southeast Asia Payment Methods in 2026." April 2026. https://fintechnews.sg/128337/e-commerce/southeast-asia-payment-methods-2026-global-payments-report/
[5] SiteGiant. "Popular Payment Gateway in Philippines 2026." March 2026. https://sitegiant.ph/blog/popular-payment-gateway-in-philippines-2026/
Sofort was a bank transfer payment method available across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Klarna acquired Sofort in 2014 and, in late 2023, announced its consolidation into Klarna Pay Now. The standalone Sofort payment method was fully discontinued on September 30, 2024 [1].
Merchants that relied on Sofort needed to migrate to Klarna Pay Now (which provides similar bank transfer functionality under the Klarna brand) or switch to alternative bank transfer methods such as SEPA Instant, Open Banking-based payment initiation, or country-specific methods like iDEAL or EPS.
This is not an isolated event. Giropay, Germany's other major bank transfer method, was also deprecated in mid-2024. The European payment landscape is consolidating around SEPA Instant as the universal A2A rail, with country-specific methods serving particular markets.
SEPA Instant Credit Transfer (SCT Inst) is the most important development in European payments since the original SEPA standardization. It settles transfers in under 10 seconds, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, at fees no higher than standard SEPA transfers [2].
Since January 2025, Eurozone banks are required to offer SEPA Instant for receiving payments. The sending obligation follows later. Non-eurozone EU member states must comply by January 2027 (receiving) and July 2027 (sending plus Verification of Payee) [2].
Verification of Payee (VoP) is now mandatory alongside SEPA Instant in the Eurozone. Before a payment is executed, the sending bank verifies that the payee name matches the IBAN. This reduces fraud and misdirected payments but adds a verification step that merchants and platforms need to account for in their checkout flows.
SEPA Instant will progressively replace standard SEPA Credit Transfers for most use cases. For businesses collecting payments from European customers, SEPA Instant provides immediate payment confirmation with irrevocable settlement, significantly better than the 1-2 day settlement window of standard SEPA.
While SEPA Instant provides a universal rail, several country-specific payment methods retain dominant positions in their home markets. These methods predate SEPA Instant and continue to be preferred by local consumers due to familiarity, integration with domestic banking apps, and established merchant acceptance.
iDEAL (Netherlands): The dominant online payment method in the Netherlands, historically accounting for around 70% of Dutch e-commerce transactions. iDEAL redirects the customer to their bank's online banking portal to authorize a direct transfer. For any business selling to Dutch consumers, iDEAL is non-negotiable. iDEAL is transitioning to iDEAL 2.0, which builds on SEPA Instant and Open Banking infrastructure.
Bancontact (Belgium): Belgium's domestic debit card and online payment scheme, used by the majority of Belgian consumers for both in-store and online purchases. Bancontact supports card-present (contactless NFC) and card-not-present (online redirect) transactions. Its integration with Payconiq enables QR-based mobile payments.
EPS (Austria): Austria's online bank transfer method, which redirects customers to their Austrian bank for payment authorization. Similar to iDEAL in function, EPS is the preferred online payment method for Austrian consumers alongside cards.
Klarna Pay Now: The successor to Sofort. Klarna Pay Now provides immediate bank transfer functionality under the Klarna brand. It is available across Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and other European markets where Sofort previously operated. Klarna also offers Pay Later (invoice) and installment options, though those are separate products.
Przelewy24 (Poland): Poland's dominant online payment aggregator, connecting to all major Polish banks. Essential for any business selling into the Polish market.
For international businesses already selling into Europe via card networks, the EU's Interchange Fee Regulation (IFR) creates a structurally different cost environment than the US or APAC.
Consumer card interchange in the EU is capped at 0.2% for debit and 0.3% for credit [3]. Compare this to the US, where interchange ranges from 1.0-2.5% depending on card type and is uncapped. A transaction that costs a merchant 2.5% in interchange in the US costs 0.2-0.3% in the EU.
Cross-border card-not-present interchange within the EEA is capped at 1.15% for debit and 1.50% for credit [3]. Post-Brexit UK ↔ EEA interchange is higher and under regulatory review. For a detailed breakdown of all five cost layers in payment gateway pricing, including how EU caps compare to uncapped markets, see our gateway costs blog.
The practical implication: card acceptance in Europe is significantly cheaper than in the US, which changes the calculus on whether APMs save money. In Europe, the case for APMs is less about cost saving and more about conversion optimization. iDEAL in the Netherlands and Bancontact in Belgium convert at higher rates than international cards because they are the methods consumers expect and trust.
Three priorities for European payment acceptance.
First, ensure SEPA Instant readiness. As VoP becomes mandatory across the Eurozone, your payment infrastructure needs to support the verification step. SEPA Instant provides immediate, irrevocable settlement, which eliminates the cash flow uncertainty of standard SEPA transfers.
Second, integrate country-specific APMs for your top European markets. iDEAL for the Netherlands, Bancontact for Belgium, EPS for Austria, Przelewy24 for Poland. These methods can lift checkout conversion by 10-20% over cards alone because they are the payment methods local consumers prefer [4].
Third, take advantage of EU interchange caps. If you are selling into Europe from outside the EU, your card processing costs are structurally lower than in the US or APAC. A payment gateway with local European acquiring can further reduce costs by processing transactions as intra-EEA rather than cross-border.
For the equivalent breakdown of how e-wallets and QR payments work across Southeast Asia, where the payment landscape is structurally different from Europe, see our SEA payments guide.
[1] Solidgate. "Klarna Deprecated Sofort: What Merchants Need to Do." May 2026. https://solidgate.com/blog/klarna-deprecated-sofort-as-a-payment-method/
[2] Klarna. "How Instant Payments Will Spark Competition in Europe." 2023. https://www.klarna.com/international/press/klarna-comment-how-instant-payments-will-spark-competition-in-europe/
[3] Adyen. "Interchange Fees Explained." April 2026. https://www.adyen.com/knowledge-hub/interchange-fees-explained
[4] GR4VY. "Payment Methods by Country 2026: What Dominates Each Market." April 2026. https://gr4vy.com/posts/payment-methods-by-country-2026-what-dominates-each-market-and-how-to-accept-them/
The Australian e-commerce market continues to show significant growth. In 2024, the market is projected to reach a revenue figure of $35.92 billion. This represents a continuation of the rapid growth seen in previous years, fueled by various factors including the increasing preference for online shopping among Australian households and the rise of digital payment solutions like POLi. Additionally, the Australian eCommerce market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.33%, reaching $49.47 billion in sales by 2028.
The Rise of POLi in Australian E-commerce
POLi has carved a niche as one of the most preferred online payment options in Australia, facilitating seamless Pay Anyone internet banking payments. Its integration with Australia Post’s robust infrastructure lends it unparalleled reliability and trust, making it a cornerstone of the digital payments landscape in the region.
How POLi Works
At its core, POLi enables users to conduct direct funds transfers from their bank accounts to merchants without the need for credit cards. This simplicity of use, coupled with the elimination of the need for a traditional account registration process, positions POLi as a user-friendly payment gateway for Australians and international merchants alike.
Instantaneous Transactions
POLi Payments are distinguished for their rapid processing, where transactions, particularly through POLi PayID, are completed almost instantly. This efficiency is paramount for businesses that prioritise quick turnaround times and for consumers who value speed in their online transactions.
Security Assured
With regular security reviews and the use of 2048-bit encrypted SSL certificates, POLi assures the utmost privacy and security for its users. Sensitive information, such as usernames and passwords, are never stored, providing a safe transaction environment.
No Registration Needed
POLi simplifies the online payment process by eliminating the need for account registration. Users can select POLi at checkout, facilitating a smoother and faster transaction process, enhancing the overall user experience.
Facilitating Cross-Border Payments
For international merchants eyeing the Australian market, POLi serves as an essential bridge, enabling direct payments from any Australian bank. This multi-bank redirect capability ensures merchants can offer a localized payment solution, essential for tapping into Australia's lucrative e-commerce sector.
The Checkout Process with POLi
Within Australia and New Zealand:
For International Transactions:
Region-locked
One of the primary drawbacks of POLi is its availability, which is currently limited to Australia and New Zealand. This regional exclusivity can pose challenges for international transactions, necessitating a third-party payment provider for global merchants.
Internet Reliant
Given Australia's vast landscape and varied internet connectivity, the online nature of POLi Payments means that transactions may sometimes be hindered by network stability issues, affecting the consistency of the payment experience.
POLi endeavors to keep costs low, charging a modest 1.25% per transaction, capped at 3%, and a flat fee of AUD 0.95 for PayID payments. While third-party payment providers may introduce additional costs, the overall affordability of POLi transactions remains a significant advantage for businesses and consumers.
Market Penetration Strategies
Adopting POLi can dramatically enhance an international merchant's appeal to Australian consumers, offering a familiar and trusted payment method. This localization strategy not only boosts sales but also builds consumer trust and loyalty.
Enhancing Customer Experience with POLi
Integrating POLi into your payment options can significantly streamline the checkout process, reducing cart abandonment rates and elevating the overall shopping experience. The convenience and security of POLi payments encourage repeat business, fostering a loyal customer base.
In Australia's dynamic e-commerce environment, POLi Payments emerges as a pivotal solution for businesses aiming to capitalize on digital market opportunities. Its integration into international payment gateways offers a seamless, secure, and user-friendly transaction process, vital for tapping into Australia's growing online consumer base.
Ready to Embrace the Future of Payments?
Exploring POLi as part of your payment solutions is more than just offering another payment method; it's about unlocking the full potential of the Australian e-commerce market. For international merchants, the journey towards maximizing e-commerce success in Australia starts with understanding and implementing localized payment methods like POLi. Discover how integrating POLi Payments can transform your business and contact Tazapay for seamless international transactions today.
Familiarising yourself with financial institutions in Singapore is crucial for the successful localization of your business. As one of the most dynamic financial hubs in Asia, Singapore offers a fertile ground for expanding your eCommerce business.
Read on for a full guide to 10 of the top banks in Singapore that are pivotal for your online payment gateway, and a quick overview of the payment landscape in the country.
The banking infrastructure in Singapore is not only steadily optimised for an increasingly digitised global economy but also well-integrated into the local populace. In 2022, Singapore topped the area of financial inclusion, beating powerhouse economies such as the United States, Britain, Hong Kong and Japan1, and attained a 92% internet penetration level in the country.2
This digital transformation is further supported by the government's proactive stance towards digitalisation, with initiatives such as PayNow and e-wallet integration enhancing Singapore's online payment gateway capabilities.
As such, the payments landscape in Singapore is largely digital, with card payments being the most popular online payment method. However, current trends in local payment solutions forecast that e-wallet payments will soon surpass cards by 2026, signalling a significant shift in consumer preferences.3
DBS Bank, the largest bank in Singapore by total assets (SGD 686 billion as of 2021), was founded in 1968 by the government of Singapore. The bank excels in providing a variety of financial products and services, including personal and business banking, investment banking, and wealth management. DBS Group champions electronic payment methods for its customers:
Most third-party international payment gateways, including Tazapay, support DBS's bank redirected payment methods and card payments, catering to eCommerce transactions. Incorporating the PayNow system enhances familiarity for Singaporean buyers, fostering trust for international merchants.
Founded in 1932, OCBC is the second-largest bank in Singapore with over SGD 542 billion in total assets as of 2020. It provides robust financial products and services suitable for a thriving digital economy:
UOB, ranking third in Singapore by assets with over SGD 459 billion (2021), has a prominent presence in the region, headquartered in the former tallest building in Southeast Asia. The bank offers:
A multinational presence since 1859, Standard Chartered Bank boasts over SGD 153 billion in total assets as of 2021 and is a trusted name among Singaporeans due to its long-standing reliability. The bank offers:
Maybank, a leading Southeast Asian bank with a strong Singapore presence (SGD 69 billion in assets as of 2021), operates over 2,600 branches across 18 countries. The bank offers:
Citibank, with SGD 52 billion in assets as of 2021, offers a diverse range of financial services, reinforcing its significant role in Singapore's banking sector. The bank offers:
HSBC, a global financial institution, holds approximately SGD 27 billion in assets as of 2021 and shares a historical lineage with Standard Chartered in British colonial history. The bank offers:
With a robust SGD 5.2 billion in assets (2021), the Bank of China marks China’s expanding influence in the Asian digital economy. The bank offers:
This Japanese banking leader, significant in Singapore, manages over SGD 5.2 billion in assets (2021) and has been a solid player since 1963. The bank offers:
Europe's largest banking group, BNP Paribas, holds about 3.7 billion SGD in total assets (2021) and maintains a strong European and global banking footprint. The bank offers:
With a clear understanding of the preferred banks in Singapore, you can better tailor your online business for the local market. Integrating with these banks through a payment gateway like Tazapay not only sets your business apart but also leverages localised payment methods to enhance customer trust.
Tazapay, operating with a 0.8%-2.5% fee for international transactions through local bank transfers, offers a compelling advantage for expanding your business in Singapore. Contact Tazapay today for more details and to take your business to the next level.
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