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The Asia-Pacific payment landscape is a paradox of opportunity and complexity. It is arguably the most dynamic financial frontier in the world. Yet, it remains a daunting patchwork of fragmented regulations, hyper-local payment habits, and entrenched local champions fiercely defending their home turf.
For any new entrant, the barriers to entry are high.
While many fintechs attempt to enter the region by solving a single piece of the puzzle, DECTA, a UK-based powerhouse, touches down with a different philosophy. Positioning itself as a “full-stack” payment infrastructure provider, DECTA offers issuing, acquiring, and processing, all housed under one roof.
Gabriel Stefanak, DECTA’s Head of Business Development, sat down with Fintech News Network’s Chief Editor, Vincent Fong to discuss why Asia Pacific is where it’s doubling down now, especially in high-growth markets like Singapore and Malaysia.
Gabriel reveals how DECTA plans to navigate the fragmentation and fill the gaps left by legacy providers. He shares on both markets,
“Singapore and Malaysia are good places to start, because of the number of financially regulated entities, which are kind of the main client for us.”
Owning the Entire Payments Stack Removes the Weakest Link
In a market as complex and fragmented as Asia-Pacific, the greatest risk for a financial institution is “solution collapse”. This happens when a multi-vendor chain breaks because one link fails as individual systems do not integrate or communicate effectively, causing a single point of failure to cascade across the entire stack.
DECTA’s solution to this is what it calls “Bespoke-as-Standard.” an approach designed to balance local market flexibility with enterprise-grade reliability. According to Gabriel, this philosophy rests on two core pillars: full-stack ownership and consultative deployment.
First comes high availability through full stack control. By owning the issuing, acquiring and processing layers, DECTA removes much of the fragility that comes from stitching together multiple vendors.
Instead of relying on loosely connected third parties, clients operate on a single integrated infrastructure, significantly improving uptime and operational resilience.
This structure also gives DECTA a clear advantage as a single point of accountability. If any component encounters an issue, responsibility does not shift between vendors. The entire chain is owned, managed, and supported by one provider, reducing downtime, finger-pointing, and escalation delays.
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Can this European payments challenger crack APAC? Asia-Pacific’s fintech market is the most dynamic and fragmented in the world. While legacy banks struggle to keep up with shifting regulations and local payment rails, one European powerhouse is making a massive bet on the region. #fintech#payments#banking#finance
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As Gabriel explains, many financial institutions today need more than issuing solutions. Banks and electronic money institutions increasingly seek a complete ecosystem, from card issuing to merchant acceptance, acquiring processing, and payments infrastructure.
DECTA supports this through a full suite of white-label capabilities, including payment gateways, enabling clients to scale across use cases without introducing additional vendors.
The second pillar is what truly defines “Bespoke as Standard”: consultation before configuration. Gabriel emphasises that DECTA does not kick off with a product pitch.
Gabriel Stefanak
“One of the biggest strengths of DECTA is our team. A good company comes with good products and good people behind it. We have a great team of professionals who are experienced in the market for more than 20 years.”
Rather than pushing predefined solutions, DECTA starts by understanding where the client wants to go, identifying core pain points and challenges. Gabriel closes, saying,
“A non-functional solution is not an actual business activity for us.”
Fintech Fast Track Lowers the Cost of Entry for New Issuers
Alongside its core infrastructure offering, DECTA has introduced the FinTech Fast Track Program, an incentive-driven initiative designed to lower the barriers to entry for new issuers and acquirers, particularly startups and non-financial companies expanding into issuing as an extension of an existing business line.
The program is built to solve a familiar problem in fintech: strong ideas slowed down by cost, complexity, and lack of execution experience.
Source: DECTA
DECTA provides up to €100,000 in implementation incentives, allowing participants to redirect capital toward critical growth areas such as marketing, product development, or internal resourcing. For early-stage players, this can change the economics of launching an issuing or acquiring proposition.
But Gabriel is clear that the financial incentive is only part of the value.
What differentiates Fintech Fast Track is direct access to DECTA’s institutional experience. With a team that brings more than two decades of hands-on market knowledge, DECTA works closely with participants to ensure they are connected to the right ecosystem partners and vendors from day one.
This is particularly critical on the issuing side, where a missing component or misaligned partner can delay launches or compromise scalability. Through the program, DECTA helps ensure all operational, technical, and regulatory components are in place before implementation begins, reducing costly rework later.
For past participants, the impact has been tangible. Companies have been able to launch faster and scale more confidently, benefiting from incentives, clear expectations, structured guidance, and early risk mitigation.
What Success Looks Like for DECTA
Looking ahead, Gabriel frames success not just in terms of volume, but reputation.
Within the next year, DECTA hopes to see financial institutions publicly validating its role as a challenger processor, one that is willing to disrupt legacy models and raise the bar for what modern processing partnerships should look like.
To hear directly from Gabriel Stefanak on why DECTA believes full-stack ownership and Bespoke as Standard are critical for succeeding in APAC payments, watch the full conversation below.
Featured image by Fintech News Singapore
