From Frustration to Fintech Empire: The Story Behind Xendit’s Rise

The Spark Behind Xendit

In 2014-2015, a young tech enthusiast named Moses Lo, born to Malaysian and Indonesian parents, was studying abroad (University of New South Wales for undergrad, later UC Berkeley for his MBA). While away from home, he observed a persistent problem: transferring money, paying merchants, or enabling commerce across borders—even within Southeast Asia—was slow, expensive, and fragmented.

One of Moses’s friends—studying in Australia—juggled multiple jobs to send remittances home to Indonesia. The transaction costs were high; the delays were frustrating. Moses believed there must be a better way.

Around that time, Moses connected with Tessa Wijaya, who shared both an interest in fintech and a strong understanding of Southeast Asia’s financial systems. Tessa had a background in investment banking and finance—studying in the U.S. and Australia—and was passionate about using technology to reduce friction when it came to how people and businesses move money.,

Also in the picture were Bo Chen, with strong technical chops, and Juan Gonzalez, whose engineering experience and software systems work would be essential. Together, the four believed that Southeast Asia—predominantly Indonesia—had huge potential: many unbanked or underbanked people, low credit card penetration, and high mobile connectivity. They asked themselves: What if businesses and individuals could send, receive, and accept payments with the ease of a few API calls? That question was the seed of Xendit, founded in 2015.

The Beginning as a P2P Payment App

Xendit’s earliest product offering was a peer-to-peer (P2P) payments app in Indonesia. Users could load money into Xendit and send requests/payments to friends using phone numbers. It was modest, but it illuminated two things: the demand existed, consumers and small businesses wanted convenience, and much of the problem was about integration and trust—not just building features.

They joined Y Combinator in Summer 2015—making Xendit the first Indonesian startup to graduate from YC. That provided early mentorship, network, credibility, and exposure.

Pivoting Toward Gateway & B2B APIs

After a few years, Moses, Tessa, Bo, and Juan realized that consumer-facing peer payments alone would limit scale. Many businesses needed a payments infrastructure: the ability to accept payments online and offline, via multiple methods (credit cards, bank transfers, e-wallets, retail channels), disburse payments, handle fraud, etc. So they pivoted toward building a payment gateway platform and APIs for businesses and marketplaces.

By around 2017, they had found product-market fit: businesses appreciated the simplicity, reliability, and range of payment methods Xendit offered. The services—APIs, dashboards, integrations—were easier and faster than many legacy competitors.

Scaling the Team, Tech & Trust

Leadership & Founders’ Roles

Moses Lo (CEO & Co-founder): the strategic driver. With international education and exposure, Moses set the vision, managed investor relationships, and made the decision to focus on Indonesia first, then Southeast Asia. He also pushed for regulatory compliance (licensing, partnering with local banks) to build trust.
Tessa Wijaya (COO & Co-Founder): brought deep operational discipline. Her prior finance/investment background helped with regulation, compliance, local ecosystem, product design for businesses, and helping shape teams and culture. She also became a public figure in Southeast Asia for women in tech and fintech.
Bo Chen (CTO & Co-founder): the tech backbone. Responsible for building the systems, infrastructure, ensuring the APIs, payment processing, reliability, and security. Handling scaling as transaction volumes surged.
Juan Gonzalez (Engineer & Co-founder): focused on software engineering, building features, maintaining product stability, user experience, integrating with varied payment methods, and ensuring technical quality.

Early Challenges: Regulatory, Trust, Payment Complexity

Expanding a payments business in Southeast Asia involves navigating many hurdles beyond code:

Licensing from regulators. In Indonesia, they secured a payment gateway license from Bank Indonesia, which boosted trust among merchants and users.
Handling fragmented payment methods: Indonesia has many local payment options, e-wallets, bank transfers, and retail agents; credit cards have low penetration. Xendit needed to integrate many channels.
Building fraud detection and risk tools. As transaction volumes rise, the risk of fraud, chargebacks, non-settlement, etc., increases. Ensuring reliability & security was key to retention and growth. (Implied in many articles)
Managing trust: businesses need a reliable SLA, speed of settlement, and transparency of fees. Users need a clear UX and trust that funds move securely.

Big Moments: Unicorn, Funding, Product Expansion

Becoming a Unicorn & Major Fundraising

Major funding rounds mark Xendit’s growth. Key milestones:

In March 2021, Xendit raised a Series B of around US$64.6 million led by Accel. That reinforced investor confidence, especially as Southeast Asia’s digital economy accelerated.
In September 2021, they raised a Series C of US$150 million, becoming a unicorn (valuation ≥ US$1 billion). Tiger Global led that round along with returning investors.
In May 2022, Xendit closed a Series D of US$300 million, bringing total capital raised to about US$538 million. This was led by Coatue and Insight Partners, along with many others.

These rounds allowed them to scale operations, hire talent, expand into new markets (e.g., Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand), build deeper product features, improve risk & compliance, and invest in infrastructure.

Product & Market Expansion

Over time, Xendit added more than just payment gateways. Their product suite expanded to:

Payment collection solutions: credit/debit card, e-wallets, bank transfers, QR-codes, retail outlets, virtual accounts.
Disbursement & payouts: enabling businesses to pay vendors, partners, and payroll.
Remittance services, via the brand Instamoney, in earlier years.
Marketplace & SaaS integrations: allowing e-commerce platforms, tech bodies, and online marketplaces to embed payments, installments, and reconciling dashboards.
Expansions to new countries: starting in Indonesia, expanding to the Philippines in 2020; further into Malaysia, Thailand, and exploring more across Southeast Asia.

Volume & Growth Metrics

Some headline numbers to mark their rise:

In early rounds, they processed USD$6.5 billion/year in payment value (TPV), which by May 2022 grew to around USD$15 billion.
Their transaction counts, merchant base, and volume of businesses served increased dramatically, especially during COVID-19 when digital payments adoption surged.

Culture, Leadership & Founders’ Philosophy

Vision Rooted in Dual Passions

Moses Lo’s two early passions—technology and finance—have defined Xendit. From childhood, he was curious about banking systems and how financial flows work; he also, a fascination with tech tools. These twin threads (money + tech) set the foundation.

Tessa, having been in investment and finance and working in international settings, brought an understanding of regulatory, local business environment, and ethics. Her presence also signals the importance of regional leadership and connection to the underserved markets in Southeast Asia.

The other founders, Bo Chen and Juan Gonzalez, reinforced this with technical rigor, with a commitment to building reliable, developer-friendly APIs and scale-ready infrastructure.

Turning Points and Lessons Learned

Recognizing When to Pivot

The shift from P2P payments (consumer-facing) to B2B payments infrastructure was one of their earliest big pivots. Observing that businesses needed better tools and that serving them could scale better was critical.

Also, deciding to go international early (starting Philippines expansion in 2020) was risky (local regulatory/regulatory, trust, competition) but paid off in widening their addressable market.

Fundraising & Scaling Responsibly

They were able to attract major international investors (Accel, Tiger Global, Coatue, Insight Partners, etc.) because of early traction, credible metrics, and trusted leadership.

Scaling isn’t just about raising money—it’s about deploying infrastructure: payment processing servers, risk engines, legal/compliance, hiring local expertise. Xendit had to balance growth with operational stability.

Handling Regulatory and Payment Complexity

Payments are regulated. Licenses, local banking relationships, settlement, handling of foreign exchange (where applicable), anti-fraud, AML/KYC—all require heavy investments. Their founders invested in that early, rather than ignoring or delaying.

Also maintaining API simplicity for developers, but not compromising security, reliability—even when traffic surges or regulatory demands emerge.

Why Xendit’s Story Matters

It’s a demonstration that fintech innovation can emerge from Southeast Asia in a home-grown way—addressing real local problems rather than importing Western models.
It shows that a combination of tech + finance + regulation + local ecosystem knowledge is a decisive competitive advantage.
With hundreds of millions of users, SMEs, merchants, and marketplaces relying on digital payments, infrastructure matters: both for commerce and for inclusion.

What’s Next: Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, the founders and leadership aim to do several things:

Continue expanding into more Southeast Asian markets (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, others) and adapt to local payment landscapes.
Diversify product offerings: besides payment acceptance/disbursements, branching into financial services, working capital/loans for SMEs, banking-as-a-service, and value-added services.
Strengthen risk, fraud detection, and compliance to maintain trust and stay ahead as usage scales and regulations evolve.

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