Primer and HitPay partner to unlock faster global expansion for Southeast Asia’s merchants

Primer and HitPay have announced a new partnership aimed at accelerating global expansion for merchants across Southeast Asia, as cross-border e-commerce activity in the region continues to rise. The collaboration brings together Primer’s global payments infrastructure and HitPay’s role as a merchant of record, with the goal of reducing complexity and improving payment performance for businesses selling internationally.

Southeast Asia’s cross-border e-commerce market is projected to exceed US$76 billion by 2030, driven by merchants increasingly serving customers beyond their home markets. However, expanding into regions such as Europe and the United States often involves navigating complex licensing requirements, managing multiple payment service provider connections, and maintaining consistent performance across currencies and geographies. These challenges can slow market entry and undermine conversion rates.

The partnership seeks to address these barriers by enabling HitPay to access local acquirers in key global markets through Primer’s unified payments infrastructure. This allows HitPay to extend multi-currency card acceptance beyond Southeast Asia while maintaining locally optimised payment experiences for international customers.

Improving cross-border payment performance

HitPay acts as the merchant of record for Southeast Asian businesses selling overseas, handling cross-border payment processing, compliance, and settlement on their behalf. The platform supports merchants based in markets such as Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, enabling them to sell to customers in the US and Europe without managing regulatory and operational complexity themselves.

By integrating with Primer, HitPay can now connect to local acquirers across major global markets. Processing transactions closer to the end customer typically improves authorisation rates and reduces friction at checkout, which is especially important for merchants operating across borders.

Aditya Haripurkar, Co-founder and CEO of HitPay, said the shift towards international sales has accelerated across its merchant base. “Our merchants have evolved from serving primarily local customers to selling globally, from Southeast Asian exporters reaching the US, to travel and hospitality businesses attracting European customers,” he said. “Accelerated access to new markets and local-level payment performance will be transformative for our fast-growing merchants. The integration was fast, with minimal engineering, but the impact has been immediate, especially in fast-growing segments like travel.”

The focus on rapid integration reflects the needs of digital-first businesses in the region, many of which lack the resources to manage complex, multi-market payment setups. Consolidating global access through a single infrastructure layer shortens time to market while preserving control and reliability.

A two-way partnership connecting global and regional merchants

The collaboration is designed as a two-way expansion model. In addition to helping Southeast Asian merchants sell globally, it enables international merchants using Primer to reach customers across Southeast Asia’s fragmented payments landscape.

As part of the agreement, HitPay is integrating into the Primer for Partners programme. Launched recently, the programme allows payment service providers, alternative payment method providers, and fraud platforms to build and manage their own integrations onto Primer’s platform, making their services available to Primer’s merchant network while monitoring performance.

HitPay brings one of the region’s most comprehensive portfolios of alternative payment methods, covering more than 700 local payer options. These include digital wallets, bank transfers, QR-based payments, and other region-specific methods that are often essential for customer adoption in Southeast Asia. Through the partnership, Primer’s merchants gain access to these options without the need for additional integrations.

Gabriel Le Roux, Co-founder and CEO of Primer, said international scaling remains one of the most difficult challenges in payments. “Enabling merchants to scale internationally is still one of the hardest problems in payments,” he said. “By partnering with HitPay, we’re opening new markets for their merchants and laying the foundation for long-term global expansion. This partnership shows how open, unified payments infrastructure can drive real growth for fintechs and the millions of businesses they power.”

He added that combining HitPay’s regional depth with Primer’s global reach creates reciprocal value. “Pairing HitPay’s regional depth with Primer’s global infrastructure creates a two-way expansion model, connecting Southeast Asian merchants to the world, and global merchants to Southeast Asia.”

Laying the foundation for long-term growth

For both companies, the partnership marks the start of a broader collaboration focused on replacing payments complexity with resilient infrastructure. As merchants expand internationally, maintaining consistent performance across markets becomes increasingly challenging due to differences in regulation, consumer behaviour, and payment preferences.

Primer operates in over 30 countries and serves merchants across retail and e-commerce, travel and experiences, and fintech. It has raised more than US$94 million from global investors. HitPay, founded in 2016 and headquartered in Singapore, serves more than 15,000 businesses across e-commerce, retail, and food and beverage, offering unified online, point-of-sale, and B2B payments.

HitPay is regulated by authorities including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank Negara Malaysia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, AUSTRAC, and FinCEN, reflecting its cross-border operating model. Backed by global investors, the company has positioned itself as a full-stack payments platform for growing APAC businesses.