Thread by @rapplerdotcom

#BusinessSense with @RalfRivas: Xendit Philippines managing director Yang Yang Zhang twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: Xendit focuses on building payments solutions, being that one-stop shop for merchants to be able to accept payments and send out disbursements.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: In the last year, we were able to achieve 25% on average month-on-month growth. We’ve also grown our team on the ground tenfold.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We were the first Philippines payment gateway to offer all three of the largest e-wallets – GCash, GrabPay, and PayMaya. We’re now pushing out into other e-wallets that are available in the market as well.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We were also the first to introduce the direct debit solution to the Philippines. It’s something that we saw in a lot of developed countries.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We’re first-to-market with a buy now, pay later aggregator. The first partner on that platform is BillEase.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We’re very excited to become a unicorn. We announced a $150-million Series C round in late 2021. This put our valuation above a billion dollars for the first time.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: A lot of times the Philippines is seen as just an expansion market. Xendit however considers the Philippines a core market today.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: Cash has been king for so long. In some senses, Filipinos will always look to the convenience and the security of actually holding cash in their hands.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: What we can do as digital players is to bring both of those features (convenience and security) to the digital side as well.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: The Philippines has always been a nation of first adopters, people who are very tech-forward, this young, mobile-first market. This pandemic brought to the forefront the necessity of digital convenience.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: What we try to focus on is ensuring that our digital channels are just as secure as handing over cold, hard cash.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We also want to make sure that the more merchants that we empower to accept digital channels, the easier it is for someone to use the e-wallets they put funds into, the bank accounts they put their savings into.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang on choosing the Philippines as the company’s second market after Indonesia: The BSP, the SEC, the DTI, they are among the most supportive and open-minded regulators really across all of Southeast Asia.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: All of these regulators are very open to innovation, very open to having conversations with disruptors like Xendit.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We saw the Philippines was really on the verge of hyper growth. We were very, very sure when we entered in 2019 that the Philippines was about to hit that hyper growth.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We saw that we had a very large rolodex of regional customers, all of whom were also interested in expanding to the Philippines.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: Not only is there a strong homegrown [fintech] scene, but the Philippines is becoming a more and more prominent part of the regional marketplace as well.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We continuously want to talk to our customers, talk to our partner channels and figure out what new builds we can create together.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: The bigger our Filipino team grows, the more tapped in we feel like we are to the needs of the Filipino market. Our thesis on expansion has always been hyperlocalization. We really want to hyperlocalize our solutions.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We want to really, really focus on SMEs. This year, we really want to make sure that we can scale for SMEs much more quickly. We want to prove to SMEs that we can be their commercialization partner.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: I think our willingness to be flexible is rooted in empathy. We were an SME once. Xendit started with a tiny core team. I’ve been a startup founder in the Philippines before. I was once that SME, facing these difficulties.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: In order for innovation to happen more and more quickly, we have to drop the barriers for entry for everybody.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: We know that we have the technology to eliminate fraud as much as possible. We know that we’ve built very secure services overall, and so we have a little bit more liberty to really help open up these services to SMEs.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: I’ve worked in a lot of markets – the US, Korea, Europe, now in the Philippines – and the Philippines has one of the most gender-equitable leadership cultures. You see a lot of women in positions of leadership.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: That said, there is a level of intimidation for most women wanting to enter the tech field simply because there is a gender imbalance that has been there for decades.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: I tried very hard not to think of myself as a woman in tech, but really just someone, a person operating in tech who happens to be a woman at the same time.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: I started coding when I was really young. I always just thought tech is something I’m really interested in, I’m really passionate about.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: What I hope that we can move to is this culture of not differentiating tech as something male-dominated but empowering women to chase their passions no matter where they lie.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: Xendit currently has over 40% female managers. A lot of our teams have initiatives that specifically focus on recruiting women, making sure they have access to as many opportunities as their male counterparts.

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@RalfRivas Xendit’s Zhang: Of this very large core of female managers, all of us really try to take on younger women as mentees. We want to make sure that we set aside our own time to help these younger women figure out what their path will be.

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@RalfRivas And that's a wRap! Watch #BusinessSense with @RalfRivas: Xendit Philippines managing director Yang Yang Zhang here: