PayMongo vs Xendit for Philippine businesses

PayMongo

B

PayMongo is a Philippine online payments company, launched in June 2019 by Francis Plaza, Luis Sia and Jaime Hing III as the first Filipino-owned fintech to go through Y Combinator, and headquartered in Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. It lets a business accept cards, GCash, Maya, GrabPay, ShopeePay, QR Ph, direct online banking and BillEase pay-later through one account, via payment links, hosted checkout, e-commerce plugins, an API and a printed in-store QR Ph code. Stripe led its US$12 million Series A in 2020 and was among its seed investors, but Stripe is an investor, not the owner: PayMongo is independent and run since February 2023 by chief executive Jojo Malolos, who took over from an interim chief executive after the founders left during a 2022 leadership upheaval, and who says the company has been net-income positive since November 2025. Merchants sign PayMongo's own Terms of Use with PayMongo Philippines, Inc., a BSP-registered operator of payment systems, and PayMongo Payments, Inc., a BSP-supervised e-money issuer that runs the PayMongo Wallet payouts land in. As of September 2026 the published rates, all before 12% VAT, are 3.125% + ₱13.39 for domestic cards, 4.02% + ₱13.39 for international cards, 1.34% for QR Ph, 2.23% for GCash and 1.70% to 1.96% for other wallets, with no setup or monthly fee. The trade-offs are slow default payouts (weekly, with cards clearing in three banking days), no card terminal or Tap to Pay, and terms that let PayMongo suspend accounts without notice and withhold settlement over pending or anticipated chargebacks.

Xendit

B-

Xendit is a Jakarta-based payments company founded in 2015 by Moses Lo, Tessa Wijaya, Bo Chen and Juan Gonzalez, which went through Y Combinator's Summer 2015 batch as a peer-to-peer payments app and pivoted to payment gateway products in 2016. It now operates in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong, and publishes a Mexican rate card as well. A merchant signs Xendit's own services agreement and is paid out of a Xendit balance, under licences held by group companies in each market — a Bank Indonesia payment gateway licence, a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas operator-of-payment-system registration, a Bank Negara Malaysia merchant-acquiring licence through Payex, a Bank of Thailand payment service provider licence, and others. Xendit publishes one regional rate card with every method's price, which is its real strength: as of September 2026, domestic cards are 2.9% + IDR 2,000 in Indonesia, 3.5% in the Philippines, 1.9% to 2.0% in Malaysia and 3.2% + THB 10 in Thailand, QRIS is 0.7%, and Indonesian virtual accounts are a flat IDR 9,000. The catch is a pricing overhaul. From 1 October 2026 Xendit adds a fixed processing fee to every transaction attempt — IDR 4,000, PHP 11, MYR 0.90 or THB 7, including failed attempts and refunds — plus a US$25 card chargeback fee, a US$50 monthly minimum for low-volume and dormant accounts and a US$250 monthly charge for merchants still on its legacy API. On small tickets the fixed fee can exceed the percentage. Card settlement is five business days in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Xendit says it serves more than 15,200 businesses; its most recent widely reported round was a US$300 million Series D in May 2022, at an undisclosed valuation.