Tessa Wijaya

Co-founder and COO — Xendit

About Tessa Wijaya

Key facts Role: Co-founder and chief operating officer Organisation: Xendit Country: Indonesia Sector: Payments (tech & innovation) Headline figures: More than $80bn in payment volume and 544 million transactions in 2025; total funding of $538m In March Fintech News Singapore named Tessa Wijaya, co-founder and chief operating officer of Xendit, among its 12 Top Women in Fintech in Asia for 2026. The list credited her with helping to build one of South-east Asia's most recognised payment infrastructure companies. The scale behind that description was set out at a recent analyst day in Kuala Lumpur. There Xendit said it processed more than 544 million transactions and more than $80bn in payment volume in 2025, according to a Forrester analyst who attended and wrote about it on 24 September. The business Xendit sells the plumbing of digital commerce. It says it connects merchants to more than 100 local payment methods, from bank transfers and e-wallets to QR codes, through a single integration. Its markets include Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong. Its licence list, updated in August, covers payment gateway and funds-transfer licences from Bank Indonesia, financing and rural bank licences from Indonesia's Financial Services Authority, and a payment system operator licence in the Philippines. It also includes a Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore, merchant acquiring in Malaysia, payment and e-money licences in Thailand, and payment intermediary services in Vietnam. Forrester wrote that this regulatory footprint gives Xendit more control over how it accepts, routes, settles and pays out funds, and makes it less reliant on intermediaries. The role As chief operating officer, Wijaya has been central to building that operation. She joined chief executive Moses Lo in 2016, soon after he founded the company, leaving investment banking at an 80% pay cut, Forbes Asia reported in 2022. "I thought I needed to learn about a new business," she said. She had studied at Syracuse University and the University of Sydney. She then spent six years at investment firms including Mizuho Asia Partners and Principia Management Group, where she built a network that Lo said was "invaluable from the very beginning". As she took on more operational and finance responsibilities, Lo made her COO in 2018. Xendit became a unicorn in September 2021 after a $150m Series C round. It raised a further $300m in a Series D led by Coatue and Insight Partners in 2022, taking total funding to $538m, Forbes reported. Women in tech Her influence also extends to who builds South-east Asian tech. Xendit says women make up 40% of its workforce, which is unusual in payments engineering. She started its Women in Tech Indonesia programme of workshops and forums for entrepreneurs and professionals, Forbes reported. She has appeared on Forbes Asia's Power Businesswomen list and on J.P. Morgan's Top 100 Asia-Pacific Women-Powered Businesses in 2021. “I thought I needed to learn about a new business,” — Wijaya, to Forbes Asia (2022) Resilience The operational case for Xendit is resilience. Forrester described how its multiple bank connections and automatic failover allowed merchants to keep taking payments when a 2023 ransomware attack on Bank Syariah Indonesia disrupted the bank's services for days. Forrester argued that merchants should judge payment providers on infrastructure ownership, fallback routes and refunds, not only on pricing and the number of payment methods offered. What to watch: whether Xendit can turn its South-east Asian depth into what Forrester calls a "differentiated cross-regional proposition". Watch also how it builds out its Indonesian lending and banking licences, and any move towards a public listing. The company is private and discloses few financial results, so profitability remains the open question. She ranks 48th as the operating chief of a leading regional payments company processing more than $80bn a year. Her power is commercial and infrastructural, and exercised alongside a founder-CEO at a private company. Sources Fintech News Singapore, Top Women in Fintech in Asia (2026) , Mar 2026 youngster.id, Tessa Wijaya, Co-Founder Xendit Masuk Daftar Pemimpin Fintech Terpopuler di Asia , 10 Mar 2026 Forrester (Meng Liu), Key Takeaways From Xendit's Analyst Day , 24 Sep 2026 Xendit, Xendit Licenses Xendit, company page (Indonesian) Forbes Asia, Xendit COO Tessa Wijaya Makes Success Leap From Investment Banking To Electronic Payments , 11 Aug 2022

Why this entry is on the list

She ranks 48th as the operating chief of a leading regional payments company processing more than $80bn a year. Her power is commercial and infrastructural, and exercised alongside a founder-CEO at a private company. Xendit says it connects merchants to more than 100 local payment methods in markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong.