The Asia-Pacific’s e-commerce economy has expanded rapidly over the past decade, driven by rising digital adoption, increasingly borderless consumer demand, and the growing ability for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to access customers beyond their domestic markets.
But beneath the growth of digital storefronts, marketplaces, and logistics ecosystems, another layer of complexity is becoming increasingly important: the infrastructure that enables money to move across borders efficiently.
As more businesses scale regionally from day one, many are managing fragmented payment ecosystems, multiple currencies, varying settlement systems, and increasingly complex operational flows across markets. What appears to consumers as a seamless transaction often requires significant coordination behind the scenes — across payments, treasury, compliance, reconciliation, and cross-border fund movement. At the same time, broader shifts across the fintech and commerce landscape are reshaping how businesses think about operational efficiency and growth.
Payoneer, which provides cross-border financial infrastructure for SMBs operating globally, recently released a whitepaper examining some of the operational and financial frictions emerging beneath Asia-Pacific’s ecommerce growth. The broader takeaway is less about a single data point, and more about how businesses are increasingly rethinking the role of financial infrastructure as they scale across markets.
In this TNGlobal Q&A, Nagesh Devata, Senior VP of APAC at Payoneer, shares his perspectives on the operational realities behind cross-border commerce growth, the evolving role of payments infrastructure, how AI is beginning to reshape financial operations, and why the next phase of Asia-Pacific’s digital economy may be defined as much by operational execution as customer acquisition.
Asia-Pacific’s e-commerce economy has scaled rapidly over the past decade. What are some of the less visible challenges emerging beneath that growth?
A lot of the conversation around ecommerce growth has understandably focused on customer acquisition, digital storefronts, logistics, and marketplace expansion. But as businesses scale across multiple markets, operational complexity increasingly shifts towards the financial layer of commerce.
What looks like a simple transaction to a consumer often involves multiple currencies, fragmented payment methods, varying settlement systems, compliance requirements, and cross-border treasury coordination behind the scenes. The challenge today is not only about generating demand, but about how efficiently businesses can convert, settle, and operationalize transactions across increasingly fragmented regional ecosystems.
This is particularly true in Asia-Pacific, where many SMEs and digitally native businesses expand regionally very early in their growth journey. They are managing customers, suppliers, marketplaces, and teams across multiple countries simultaneously, often without the infrastructure resources that large enterprises have traditionally relied on.
Why are payment infrastructure and transaction flows becoming a more strategic issue for SMEs and digitally native businesses?
Historically, payments infrastructure was often viewed as a backend operational function. Today, it is much more closely tied to business performance.
Cross-border businesses are increasingly focused on operational efficiency because even relatively small inefficiencies — whether around payment acceptance, FX conversion, reconciliation, or settlement timing — can compound meaningfully at scale. These issues directly affect conversion, margin visibility, cash flow predictability, and ultimately the ability for businesses to scale sustainably.
For SMEs especially, predictability matters. Unlike larger enterprises, they typically operate with leaner buffers and tighter working capital cycles. Faster settlement, greater visibility across currencies, and more reliable cross-border payment infrastructure can significantly improve operational resilience.
More broadly, we are seeing businesses move away from viewing payments purely as transactions and instead seeing financial infrastructure as a strategic enabler of growth.
Singapore is often positioned as a regional commerce and fintech hub. Why is this conversation particularly relevant for Singapore businesses?
Singapore businesses are uniquely exposed to cross-border operational complexity because many operate regionally by default rather than domestically first.
Whether it is ecommerce merchants, service providers, digital agencies, SaaS companies, or direct-to-consumer brands, businesses here are often simultaneously serving customers and managing operations across Southeast Asia and beyond. That creates increasing complexity around collections, payouts, FX management, settlement coordination, and compliance across markets.
As regional commerce matures, businesses are increasingly recognising that fragmented financial operations can create operational drag that becomes harder to manage manually over time.
This is where integrated financial infrastructure becomes important. Businesses want greater visibility, faster movement of funds, simpler reconciliation, and systems that allow them to scale regionally without adding unnecessary operational friction.
Singapore’s position as a regional business hub means many companies here are encountering these infrastructure challenges earlier — and at greater scale — than businesses operating primarily within a single domestic market.
Your recent whitepaper discusses inefficiencies across checkout and settlement flows. What broader trend does this reflect?
The broader trend is that front-end commerce infrastructure has evolved faster than the underlying movement of money across borders.
Consumer expectations today are shaped by seamless digital experiences. But behind many cross-border transactions, businesses are still coordinating across disconnected systems for payments, FX, treasury, settlement, reconciliation, and compliance.
As transaction volumes grow, these inefficiencies become more visible. Businesses are increasingly focused on reducing friction not just because it improves operational efficiency, but because it directly impacts customer trust, conversion performance, and working capital management.
We are also seeing a mindset shift. Historically, businesses focused heavily on driving top-line growth. Increasingly, they are asking how they can better capture and operationalize value from the demand they already generate.
That is pushing infrastructure conversations much closer to the centre of business strategy.
How is AI beginning to reshape the way cross-border financial infrastructure operates?
AI is becoming increasingly important because cross-border commerce generates significant operational complexity and fragmented data flows.
One major opportunity is visibility. Businesses today often manage multiple systems across payments, currencies, marketplaces, and geographies. AI can help consolidate and interpret that information more intelligently, enabling faster decision-making and reducing manual operational overhead.
We are also seeing AI improve areas such as reconciliation, fraud detection, compliance workflows, intelligent payment routing, and customer support automation.
At Payoneer, we are using AI tools internally to streamline workflows, improve operational efficiency, and work towards automating areas like onboarding and support. But more broadly, we believe AI’s long-term value lies in helping businesses navigate complexity more efficiently, particularly SMEs that do not have large finance or treasury teams.
Over time, AI-enabled infrastructure has the potential to lower many of the traditional barriers associated with cross-border expansion.
As AI becomes more embedded into commerce infrastructure, what do you see as the next major shift for cross-border business operations?
Commerce is becoming increasingly interconnected and increasingly automated.
Over time, we expect businesses to move towards more intelligent operational workflows — whether that is automated treasury management, dynamic settlement optimization, AI-assisted reconciliation, or machine-driven transaction coordination across markets.
As this evolves, trust infrastructure becomes even more important. Businesses will increasingly need systems that can provide security, compliance, interoperability, and reliable identity verification across fragmented global environments.
What is particularly interesting is that the future of cross-border commerce may not simply be defined by who can acquire customers most effectively, but by who can operate most efficiently across increasingly complex international systems.
That creates a growing role for integrated financial infrastructure platforms that can help businesses coordinate these moving parts more seamlessly.
Looking ahead, what will differentiate the businesses that succeed in the next phase of Asia-Pacific’s digital economy?
The next phase of growth will likely favour businesses that combine regional ambition with operational agility and financial resilience.
Cross-border commerce is becoming more accessible, but it is also becoming more operationally demanding. Businesses that succeed will increasingly be those that can manage complexity effectively — whether across payments, currencies, compliance, cash flow, or distributed operations.
We also believe there is a broader shift happening in the global economy. The next economy is increasingly borderless, and SMEs are becoming much more important participants in global trade. Technology is lowering barriers that historically limited access to international markets, but businesses still need trusted infrastructure that allows them to operate globally with confidence.
Ultimately, the conversation is evolving beyond simply enabling transactions. It is about enabling businesses anywhere to participate more fully in the global economy.
Featured image: Payoneer