EBANX Expands Recurring Alternative Payments Offering, Unlocks a 1 Billion User Potential Across 12 Emerging Markets

WHY THIS MATTERS:The global land grab for subscription revenue is constrained by a fundamental friction point: billions of consumers in emerging markets operate outside of traditional card networks. This announcement from EBANX—leveraging a trend toward increasingly sophisticated alternative payment methods (APMs)—directly addresses a major gap in the recurring payments landscape. By expanding capabilities for local digital wallets and instant payment rails like Capitec Pay and UPI AutoPay across a dozen high-growth regions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, EBANX is building the infrastructure necessary to monetize non-card-holding consumers. The ability to switch millions of customers from manual, one-off renewal workarounds to automated, consent-based subscriptions is a watershed moment for digital commerce. This is crucial for global merchants looking to unlock genuine scale and sustainable revenue from a user base previously inaccessible through conventional financial instruments.

Today, EBANX—a global payment technology company connecting merchants with consumers and businesses in emerging markets—is annoucing the expansion of its offering for recurring alternative payment methods (APMs) to six more countries across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America: the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, Colombia, and Peru. 

The announcement takes place during Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, and follows EBANX’s recent expansion announcement, which brings its payments operations into Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Malaysia, and Vietnam, with the latter two scheduled to go live in Q3. These operations will be fully supported by EBANX’s APAC HQ in Singapore.

The integration of these new recurring capabilities adds to EBANX’s current offering of recurring APMs in India, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. Via EBANX, global merchants of subscription-based services such as streaming, software, and gaming platforms will be able to reach more than 1 billion people* who use these APMs across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, according to data from APMs’ operators and Statista.

This reach becomes even more impressive considering that over 1.3 billion adults lack access to credit or debit cards across these markets, according to the World Bank. 

“Consumers without access to credit or debit cards rely heavily on APMs to pay for subscription-based e-commerce services,” said Eduardo de Abreu, Global Chief Product Officer (CPO) at EBANX and Regional CEO of EBANX Singapore. “If a SaaS or streaming company does not offer local, alternative solutions for these consumers, they simply won’t access them.”

EBANX’s launches include recurring capabilities for digital wallets in Southeast Asia, such as Maya and GCash in the Philippines, OVO and DANA in Indonesia, and TrueMoney in Thailand. The rollouts will be available to merchants in Q2, Q3, and Q4 this year. 

Across Asia, EBANX also enables recurring transactions through UPI AutoPay, built on top of India’s leading instant payment infrastructure, UPI. Through EBANX, the system’s feature is already proving its value: a global AI merchant that implemented UPI AutoPay acquired more than 4,000 new customers per day during the first three months.

In South Africa, Capitec Pay Recurring—the new recurring feature of the account-to-account (A2A) solution Capitec Pay—will be available for cross-border transactions through EBANX’s integration. EBANX was the first global Payment Service Provider (PSP) to offer Capitec Bank’s A2A solution in a cross-border model. The new Capitec Pay feature enables global merchants to collect recurring payments directly from Capitec Bank accounts through an A2A, non-card payment flow.

New subscriptions in Latin America

In Latin America, Pix, Brazil’s instant payment method, introduced Pix Automático, its recurring feature, in June of last year. EBANX integrated it from day one and has already demonstrated its potential to grow merchants’ consumer base and ultimately increase sales: 56% of customers using Pix Automático to buy from EBANX’s merchants are new users. 

NuPay has also shown strong results for subscription-based platforms that use EBANX: a global SaaS provider offering the digital wallet’s recurring feature via EBANX saw a 13% increase in paid subscriptions compared to credit cards, a 17% rise in free-trial sign-ups, and a 76% payment success rate.

With today’s launch, EBANX is also enabling two additional APMs in Latin America for cross-border transactions: the mobile payment platform Nequi in Colombia and the digital wallet Yape in Peru. These solutions complement existing recurring payment options integrated by EBANX in the region, such as Mercado Pago in Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil, as well as Pix Automático and NuPay in Brazil. 

Less friction, more revenue 

“For years, low card penetration in emerging markets forced subscription merchants to rely on one-off payment workarounds that were never built to support long-term customer relationships,” commented Abreu. “Over time, these approaches eroded retention because every renewal required the customer to pay again, manually.”

Recurring APMs address that friction through a consent-based enrollment model. Originally shaped by local payment challenges, APMs in emerging economies are evolving to deliver an increasingly card-like experience for end users. Once the customer provides prior authorization, merchants can automatically initiate recurring billing, reducing the need for manual action at each renewal and enabling a more seamless subscription experience on local payment rails. 

EBANX at Money20/20 Asia

At Money20/20 Asia, taking place in Bangkok, Thailand, from 21 to 23 April 2026, EBANX is speaking in two key sessions. 

In the panel Ecosystem Readiness: Turning Isolated Progress into Coordinated Scale, Eduardo de Abreu joins other industry leaders from Nium, Boku, and Bitpace to discuss how fragmented advancements across regulation, infrastructure, and market demand can be aligned to drive scalable ecosystem growth.

In the session Innovation Without Borders, Vladimira Artopé, Regional Director for Southeast Asia at EBANX, contributes to a discussion on the transformative impact of fintech and education solutions for underserved women in Asia, particularly in maternal and financial health. The panel highlights how technology can support greater financial inclusion in resource-constrained environments.

*1,020 billion people use APMs across the following 12 emerging markets, based on data from the operators of the most used APMs in each country and Statista: Brazil (Pix), India (UPI), South Africa (Capitec Pay), Colombia (Nequi), Peru (Yape), the Philippines (GCash), Indonesia (DANA), Malaysia (TrueMoney), Mexico, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay (Mercado Pago).  

FF NEWS TAKE: This move significantly shifts the needle for cross-border subscription services. While APMs have long enabled one-off transactions, their full evolution into seamless, card-like recurring payments is the key to unlocking true scale and stickiness for global SaaS and streaming platforms in high-growth markets. We expect to see competitor PSPs rapidly copy this playbook, particularly focusing on converting real-time payment schemes like Pix and UPI into consent-based subscription rails to drive financial inclusion and reduce churn.