Citcon Inc., the one stop gateway to the world’s fastest growing payment options that enables cross-border and in-market commerce to scale, today announced the organization’s latest expansion efforts in Asia Pacific. Following a successful Series C fundraise in October 2021, the global payments provider has expanded its portfolio of local wallets and alternative payment schemes to more than 200 and added in-market senior leadership and support staff to bolster its market presence throughout the Asia Pacific region.
Asia Pacific countries currently account for nearly three-quarters of total global retail growth and about two-thirds of online growth. From 2014 to 2019, the compound annual growth rate for Asia Pacific retail sales was more than quadruple that of the rest of the world and online sales growth nearly doubled the rest of the world’s.1 This massive retail growth is being fueled by digital payments and hyper-local payment schemes. For overseas merchants expanding into Asia Pacific through physical locations or ecommerce, as well as regional merchants looking to expand market presence, navigating the complex web of local payment schemes is paramount.
With its expanded in-market presence, Citcon is rapidly expanding digital wallet and local payment scheme integration throughout Asia Pacific, recently adding more than 50 popular local wallet solutions to better serve consumers in South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia. Citcon has also expanded its integration with AliPay, WeChatPay, PayPal, and Klarna which have emerged as leading payment platforms serving global markets. Today, Citcon’s single API solution enables merchants to access more than 200 payment methods through a single integrated payment, reconciliation, and settlement solution.
To manage its on-the-ground presence, Citcon has expanded its in-market leadership team in key locations, including Japan, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Citcon recently welcomed Andrew Meimes, VP, Head of APAC, Ian Zhang, General Manager for Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong and Siddharth Sahi, Director of APAC Payment Partnerships based in Singapore.
“The booming middle class in Asia Pacific markets is the most important force driving global commerce,” said Chuck Huang, Founder and CEO of Citcon. “While western brands and western styles will find eager customers throughout Asia, buying and selling merchandise is still a hyper-localized process. We have rapidly grown our Asia Pacific market presence, including adding in-country experts and staff to help our partners to scale their businesses throughout the continent and beyond.”
Traditional western payment methods like credit cards have failed to penetrate Asia Pacific markets where digital wallets and local payment schemes dominate consumer commerce. Merchants relying on traditional credit cards can experience low approval rates due to inconsistent overseas credit card validation, and high chargebacks due to international fraud. Further, e-commerce cart abandonment rates in Asia Pacific can increase when local payment methods are not available.
Alternative payment solutions like software based wallets, pioneered in China and now rapidly growing throughout Asia, offer many advantages over traditional credit cards and card-based wallets popular in the United States and other western countries. With software based mobile wallets, payments are heavily encrypted and tokenized, insulating card and account numbers. Wallet purchases can therefore be verified instantly, with very little risk of fraud or chargebacks.
“As our markets have rapidly evolved from largely cash-based to cashless, consumer culture has undergone a dramatic shift,” said Andrew Meimes, Citcon VP, Head of APAC. “Merchants need the functionality to integrate into the new shopping and commerce models in these markets and the cultural insights to optimize their presence with the consumers they wish to engage.”
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