We built payments for APAC SaaS, because nobody else did.
Tapped is the tap-to-pay platform that vertical SaaS companies plug in when they've outgrown Stripe and can't stomach a second decade of legacy acquirer integrations. Twelve markets, eleven currencies, one API.
Our thesis, stated plainly.
Most global payment platforms were built for the United States, extended to Europe, and translated into APAC as an afterthought. It shows, in the takes, in the decline rates, in the six-week merchant boarding, and in the way schemes treat every region as a backwater.
We think APAC deserves a payment platform that was designed for it from the ground up. That means local acquiring licences in every market we operate in, native settlement in the merchant's own currency, regulator-grade KYB that actually passes on the first attempt, and latency that doesn't embarrass itself on a phone over 4G.
We started with tap-to-pay because it's the single biggest unlock for vertical SaaS in the region. A restaurant platform shouldn't have to ship a leased terminal to 12,000 merchants. A field-services app shouldn't tell technicians to "send an invoice later." If you put a certified contactless kernel on every iPhone and Android phone in the country, and you do the scheme and regulator work, everything else follows.
How we got here.
A six-year arc, told in four chapters. None of it was planned the way it reads now; all of it followed from one observation early on.
A terminal couldn't survive a typhoon.
Our founding team was shipping leased Ingenicos to F&B merchants in Manila when a typhoon took out 40 units in one afternoon. Every unit was a six-week replacement lead time and a $300 deposit against a merchant who needed to trade tomorrow. That's the week we decided phones had to become the terminal.
Scheme-certified, phone-only, in one market.
Eighteen months of kernel work, four unsuccessful scheme audits, and finally a signed Level 2 certification from Visa and Mastercard for the Philippines. 3,400 merchants live by year-end, most of them on iPhones they already owned. The unit economics worked. The idea was real.
Seven markets, eight currencies, one platform.
Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan. We stopped describing ourselves as a tap-to-pay company and started describing ourselves as a payments network. The developer platform shipped that year. So did Tap Ledger, Tap Certify, and Tap Onboard. Everything in one spine.
The platform behind the platforms.
190,000 sub-merchants. 9.1 billion dollars processed last year. Five more markets coming in 2026-27. The vertical SaaS category has figured out that general-purpose payment processors can't serve their needs; Tapped is the answer that runs under 70+ platforms across the region, and counting.
Four things we try to do on purpose.
These aren't aspirations. They're the filters we use when we disagree.
Ship the boring work first.
Kernels, certifications, licences, reconciliation pipelines. The work that doesn't demo well, but is load-bearing for every customer we'll ever have. We'd rather be right than first.
One spine, not five silos.
Tap Core, Terminal, Onboard, Certify, Ledger, and the developer platform are one product. The Stripe-era temptation is to franchise each into its own business unit; we refuse. A single integration is the whole point.
Regulator-grade by default.
Every product surface, KYB screens, evidence packs, merchant statements, ships ready for the most demanding regulator in the market. Downstream markets get the same bar; we don't maintain a weaker variant.
Answer the phone.
Platforms are our customers; merchants are their customers. When a dispute lands or a payout misses, someone at Tapped is on the phone inside ten minutes, not a ticket queue twelve hours deep.
Choose merchants over growth.
We've walked away from two nine-figure deals because the counterparty's risk profile would have hurt the merchant base. It's not virtue, it's survival. Acquirers who chase volume at any price always lose their licence eventually.
Let the platform lead.
We never talk to a platform's sub-merchant without the platform's blessing. The entire reason they chose us is that their merchants see their brand, not ours. We're in the back of house; that's where we belong.
Who's building this.
Payments, cryptography, banking, and vertical SaaS, operators who had the problems we now solve, in their previous life.
Maya Tanaka
Ex-Grab Payments, led the Philippines acquiring build. 12 years in APAC payments.
Rohan Hariharan
Built the first mobile-phone kernel in Southeast Asia to pass Visa L2. Paladin alum.
Sofia Arellano
Former head of sub-merchant risk at a top-three global acquirer. 18 years in scheme.
Liam Kandasamy
Opened the Singapore office and holds the MAS Major Payment Institution licence.
Yuki Nakamura
Owns Tap Core, Terminal, and the SDK surface. Ex-staff at a PCI-PTS lab.
Juan Dela Cruz
Originated Kanpai, OrbitSalon, Fieldwork. 60+ platform partners over three years.
Priya Handoko
Built the platform and dashboard design system. Previously at Gojek and Xendit.
Chen Wei
Manages the Tap Ledger currency book across 11 currencies. Ex-Citi treasury.
Operators and funds who live in this region, not tourists.
Want to see what a payment platform built for APAC actually feels like?
Book a 30-minute walkthrough with someone on the team who's shipped a production integration in your vertical.