At its first-ever user event in Southeast Asia, Stripe today introduced new product updates to support businesses of all sizes in the region, enabling them to cater to the surging demand for digital commerce and pursue global growth opportunities. 

At Stripe Tour Singapore, the company showcased its expanded product suite that will help minimize checkout friction and reduce gaps between online and in-person payments for businesses. Beyond payments, Stripe also showcased solutions for businesses to modernize their finance stack to increase efficiency and productivity through automation. 

Meeting consumer demand for digital commerce everywhere, at any time, on any device 

Southeast Asian consumers have adopted digital commerce enthusiastically. A recent Stripe report on global digital trade showed that 84% of Singapore consumers were open to purchasing physical products online from a company based in another country, and 74% were open to purchasing digital services— significantly above the global average of 68%. Expectations have shifted commensurately and consumers now expect a frictionless digital commerce experience everywhere, at any time, and on any device. 

To help businesses respond, Stripe Tour Singapore showcased Stripe’s newly updated optimized checkout suite, which allows businesses to offer their customers a superb checkout experience, without having to build or maintain it themselves.

Stripe also shared updates about its accelerated checkout solution “Link” to businesses in Southeast Asia. Link speeds up checkout for customers by saving payment details that can be used at hundreds of thousands of businesses on Stripe and, in turn, increases conversion for businesses. According to internal Stripe data, businesses that switched to Stripe's newest payments integration—the Stripe Payment Element—saw a 10.5% increase in revenue on average compared to those that did not.

Enabling businesses in Southeast Asia with Revenue and Finance Automation

Recent Stripe research has uncovered unexpected optimism from businesses in Southeast Asia about their international expansion prospects, despite the challenging economic climate. 84% percent of businesses in Singapore expect to expand into new countries over the next 24 months. However, as businesses scale their international operations, there are significant challenges to overcome. 

^{Sarita Singh, Regional Head and Managing Director, Southeast Asia, India and Greater China, Stripe}

These challenges are creating undue pressure on finance leaders in Southeast Asia, who have to spend a large proportion of their time solving them manually. According to a new Stripe study of CFOs and finance leaders globally, released today, 89% of finance leaders in Singapore spend more than half of their time on manual back office tasks, which they could be spending on strategic work concerning the overall direction of the company. The cost of manual back office tasks does not only relate to time, it is also impacting business decision-making. Sixty-five percent of finance leaders in Singapore think that expanding into new markets is hard because of the potential disruption to their existing financial systems. 

In response, Stripe shared an expansion of its revenue and finance automation product suite, designed to help businesses solve these problems by automating revenue and finance workflows. By coordinating billing, tax, reporting, and data services in one modern stack, Stripe’s revenue and finance automation suite helps drive growth, reduce costs, increase efficiency, and enables CFOs to be strategic business innovators.

This also addresses one of the biggest challenges preventing further internationalization: dealing with an increasingly complex international tax environment. Sixty-eight percent of finance leaders in Singapore believe that their business’ tax requirements are becoming more complex. 

Stripe Tax, a core element of Stripe’s revenue and finance automation suite, is designed to solve these tax challenges by enabling businesses to automatically collect sales tax, VAT, and GST on Stripe transactions in more than 40 countries. Stripe announced a further expansion of the countries covered in Southeast Asia to incorporate Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, in addition to Singapore. This enables businesses in the region to expand into rapidly growing neighboring markets without additional tax complexities.  

“Southeast Asia’s rapidly expanding and dynamic digital economy holds tremendous global potential. The ingenuity and entrepreneurship emerging from this region will continue to have global impact,” said Sarita Singh, Regional Head and Managing Director, Southeast Asia, India and Greater China at Stripe. “We’re in it for the long run, constantly innovating to eliminate the complexities of finance and technology, so that businesses can focus on growth.”