Short answer
Xendit is a Southeast Asian payment infrastructure provider operating in the Philippines and neighbouring markets, offering one API for cards, e-wallets, bank transfers, virtual accounts, over-the-counter payments and outbound disbursements. Its distinguishing feature for Philippine merchants is regional coverage plus payouts, meaning sending money out rather than only collecting it.
Two capabilities separate it from a straightforward store gateway. Virtual accounts give each customer or invoice a unique account number, so an incoming bank transfer identifies itself and reconciles without anyone reading a deposit slip. Disbursements push money outward under program control, which is what a marketplace paying sellers, a logistics platform paying riders, or an insurer paying claims actually needs.
That breadth is also the reason it can be the wrong choice. A single-brand store collecting from Philippine buyers may never touch disbursements or multi-country support, and pays in integration complexity for capability it does not use. Choose on the payment methods your buyers reach for and whether money has to travel in both directions — not on the length of the feature list.
Where this comes up in our work
Related terms
PayMongo
PayMongo is a Philippine payment gateway built around a developer API and hosted checkout, aggregating cards, wallets including GCash, Maya and GrabPay, online banking and over-the-counter payments behind one integration.
Payment Gateway
A payment gateway is the service that carries a customer’s payment details from a checkout to the institutions that authorise and settle the money — card networks, banks, e-wallets.
InstaPay vs PESONet
InstaPay and PESONet are the two automated clearing houses under the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ National Retail Payment System.
API (Application Programming Interface)
An API is a defined way for one piece of software to request data or actions from another: a checkout asking a payment gateway to take a GCash payment, or a dashboard pulling yesterday’s sales from an accounting system.
Reading definitions because you are scoping a project? Skip ahead and just ask.