Editor’s note: TNGlobal’s reporter attended the Stripe Tour Singapore 2025 (sponsored).
Stripe, the programmable financial services company, has on Wednesday showcased stablecoin and AI product updates at Stripe Tour Singapore 2025 to accelerate global growth for Asian businesses.
The announcements come as new research from Stripe shows that businesses across Asia are expecting to quickly adopt the technologies reshaping the internet economy. Stablecoins and AI are becoming core enablers of cross-border commerce across the region, according to a statement.
Asian businesses are optimistic and moving fast
Despite macroeconomic headwinds, businesses in Asia remain confident about global growth. In a new Stripe survey of business leaders in Singapore, India, China, and Japan, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) said they are confident they can reach new customers in international markets over the next 12 months.
Nearly half (46 percent) of cross-border businesses in Asia surveyed expect their overall international sales to grow in that timeframe. This optimism persists despite significant hurdles, including managing rising costs (cited by 47percent) and navigating economic uncertainty (34 percent). Only 20 percent listed tariffs and trade restrictions as major barriers.
“Asia is showing extraordinary resilience and focusing on international growth,” said Sarita Singh, regional head and managing director for Southeast Asia, India, and Greater China at Stripe.
“Between July 2024 and June 2025, over half of our users in the region (54 percent) sold internationally and we’re seeing cross-border payments surge by over 30 percent in hubs like Singapore. Stripe is helping businesses to go global, faster, and we expect new technologies like stablecoins and AI to accelerate their growth.”
Asian businesses eager to adopt stablecoins to redefine cross-border trade
Stablecoins offer a global, programable platform for borderless financial services, where a single integration can unlock customers in dozens of countries at once. Asia is strongly positioned to lead the way in weaving stablecoins into the fabric of internet commerce due to high adoption rates and positive regulatory momentum. Stripe’s research finds almost half (46 percent) of surveyed businesses are planning to start using stablecoins within 24 months.
Stripe is already processing stablecoin payments from over 120 countries and acquired Bridge and Privy. Earlier this year, Stripe announced Stablecoin Financial Accounts, accessible from over 100 countries, including Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Brunei. Entrepreneurs and businesses from those countries will be able to hold a balance in stablecoins, receive funds on both crypto and fiat rails, and send stablecoins anywhere in the world.
Through Bridge, Stripe has also partnered with Visa to launch a Visa card that spends down a stablecoin balance for cardholders in dozens of countries.
AI is expected to transform commerce in Asia
Businesses in Asia anticipate a shift from traditional websites to AI-native interfaces, with AI-powered browsers and LLMs becoming primary gateways to the internet. By 2030, 82 percent expect to utilize AI-driven sales channels and 50 percent expect at least a portion of their sales to occur through these new channels.
Stripe has long optimized checkouts for humans, and is now doing so for a new buyer: AI agents. Already, 20 percent of surveyed businesses in Asia are implementing agentic AI, with another 47 percent either fully or partially prepared to adopt it.
Earlier this year, Stripe introduced the world’s first AI foundation model specifically built for payments. While Stripe has used specialized AI models for tasks like fraud prevention, boosting authorization rates, and tailoring checkout experiences, this new foundation model is trained on tens of billions of transactions and can detect complex payment patterns and signals that were previously out of reach.
For example, early results thwarting card testing attacks demonstrate the effectiveness of the new Payments Foundation Model. With its previous models, Stripe gradually reduced card testing by 80 percent over two years. By applying the new foundation model, Stripe increased its detection rate for attacks on large businesses by 64 percent practically overnight.
Expanding programable financial services across Asia
Stripe supports a broad range of Asian businesses, from fast-growing startups to major enterprises, including Aspire, Luckin Coffee, Manus AI, Shoplazza, StarHub, and Zoho.
In addition to applying AI and stablecoins to accelerate their growth, Stripe has updated its suite of payments, revenue, and embedded finance tools. Asian businesses can take advantage of over 50 upgrades, including:
- Expanded market access: Businesses operating through a U.S. Stripe account can now tap into large consumer markets like Brazil, India, South Korea, and Indonesia, simply by enabling local payment methods like PIX, UPI, and NaverPay directly from their Stripe dashboard without needing a local entity.
- Stripe Reader S710, our newest smart reader featuring cellular connectivity so businesses can process payments uninterrupted–even if the wifi goes down.
- New payment methods, including PayNow on Stripe Terminal for Singapore businesses, recurring payments with Weixin Pay for businesses globally, GoPay for Indonesian businesses, and Naver Pay for businesses in Singapore looking to tap into Korea.
- Stripe Radar, which prevented over S$1 billion ($768 million) in fraud across Asia in 2024, will also cover non-card payment methods like SEPA and ACH.
- Stripe Tax supports global registration and filing, country- and U.S. state-specific tax rules for calculating shipping fees, as well as tax collection in 102 countries – up from 57 last year.
- Stripe Orchestration, which allows users to easily manage multiple payment processors with full control and visibility, from right within Stripe.
- Managed Payments, a merchant of record offering where Stripe will handle global tax compliance, fraud and disputes, and the checkout experience, in addition to handling customer support for transactions through Link.
Headquartered in San Francisco and Dublin, Stripe processes over $1.4 trillion of payments annually, equivalent to 1.3 percent of global GDP. Stripe users include half of the Fortune 100, 80 percent of the Forbes Cloud 100 and 78 percent of the Forbes AI 50.
Singapore’s Aspire integrates with Stripe to boost businesses payment