Payment Options Partners With Tribe Payments for Acquirer Processing Across Asia Pacific and CEMEA

Singapore-headquartered Payment Options has partnered with Tribe Payments to provide processing technology and connectivity for its acquiring business. The first rollout starts in Mauritius, which matters because Payment Options is now a Visa and Mastercard Principal Member there and is moving from referral-based acquiring into direct processing.

1. Payment Options will use Tribe Payments as the processing backbone for its Visa and Mastercard direct acquiring businesses across Asia Pacific and CEMEA, with Mauritius as the starting point and a phased rollout planned into other markets as the group expands.
2. Founded in Singapore in 2012, Payment Options started as a reseller and referral agent for acquirers, then built its own payment gateway and moved up the stack to become a Payment Service Provider and Payment Facilitator. Today it operates offices in Singapore, Mauritius, Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia.
3. After gaining Principal Membership of the card schemes in Mauritius, Payment Options said it considered three options for card processing: build, buy or partner. It explored building an in-house processing platform, but after speaking to several providers it chose Tribe for acquirer processing.
4. Payment Options Managing Director Aaron Yip said the company wanted “genuine payments expertise” and “real knowledge of the markets” it operates in, and pointed to Tribe’s technical expertise and experience working directly with the card schemes during pre-sales as reasons for choosing the partner.
5. The partnership is already extending beyond core processing: Payment Options is exploring additional Tribe solutions including SoftPOS, and has also referred several of its own partners to Tribe.

For PSPs and acquirers, the interesting part here is the route from referral partner to Principal Member and direct acquirer. That shift changes the technical and operational requirements fast, which is exactly where processing partners like Tribe get pulled in.