Solutions at a glance

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• Cross-border business payments | Supplier settlement across China and ASEAN

• ‍Beneficiary account validation | Account details confirmed before funds are sent

• Destination-market guidance| Local receiving-market requirements advised up front

• Dedicated account management | Named specialist for finance and documentation

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Results

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• Simplifies the workflow of paying partners in China and across ASEAN, with fewer moving parts.
• Confirms beneficiary account details before a transfer is sent, so payments stop failing mid-process.
• Applies specialist knowledge of destination-market requirements, so KIBO does not have to build it in-house.
• Removes the bottlenecks that sat between a payment and a supplier releasing goods.
• Frees the team’s time and attention to focus on growing the business, not chasing payments.

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KIBO Cheese keeps 43 outlets stocked by paying partners and suppliers abroad, many in China, alongside others across ASEAN. Run through a third-party platform or a direct bank transfer, those payments kept snagging on unfamiliar systems and regulations: a beneficiary name that did not match, or funds that reached the destination bank but could not be released. Each snag became a bottleneck in the transaction process and every stalled payment held up a supplier, a shipment, and the team’s time along with it.

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From a home garage to 43 outlets

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KIBOCheese began in 2016 the way many Indonesian F&B brands do, online only, baked out of a home garage. The response was strong enough that the founders opened their first physical store in 2017.

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Then COVID arrived. What looked like an existential threat became the brand’s inflection point: KIBO found its product-market fit and grew through it. Nine years in, the business runs around 43 locations across Greater Jakarta and Bandung, in-mall and standalone.

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Growth at that pace changes what a finance team has to be good at. One thing it had to master quickly was paying partners abroad, in China, and across ASEAN.

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Payments that stalled the supply chain

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Before Wallex, KIBO settled overseas invoices through a third-party payment platform or by transferring directly into the supplier’s bank account in the destination market. Across China and ASEAN, neither route was dependable.

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The failures were rarely dramatic. They were procedural and that made them harder to plan around. A beneficiary name that did not match the account. Funds that arrived but could not be released. Each one small on its own; each one enough to stop a shipment.

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For a bakery business, a stalled payment is more than a finance problem; it's an inventory one.

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A specialist for China and ASEAN

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KIBO’s firsttransaction through Wallex went to a supplier in China. What changed was not simply the payment rail;, it was having a cross-border specialist handle the parts that used to trip the workflow up.

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Rather than discovering an account-name mismatch once funds were already in motion, Wallex confirms the beneficiary company’s account details first. The error that used to cost a shipment date now costs a quick correction.

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Regulations, already understood

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The obstacles KIBO ran into came from unfamiliar rules in unfamiliar markets. Wallex’s specialist knowledge of destination-market requirements meant KIBO no longer  had to develop that expertise internally or learn it by trial and error, one delayed payment at a time.

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Fewer steps, more focus

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The clearest return KIBO reports is not a line item. It is the removal of steps, a payment process with fewer moving parts, and a team whose energy is back on the work that actually grows the business: more outlets, better product, smoother operations.

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A team, not a ticket queue

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Onboarding involved thorough validation and documentation; KIBO describes it candidly as lengthy at the outset. What made it workable was that the Wallex team walked them through it rather than handing over a form.

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That hands-on model continued into day-to-day operations, with finance and tax documentation requests handled directly with a named account manager rather than through a general support channel.

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"Sometimes, because of different systems or different regulations, there were obstacles that became quite a bottleneck during the transaction process. There might be a wrong account name, or the funds had arrived but the bank could not release them."

- Vicky Kurniawan, Co-Founder & Business Director, Seidai Food Indonesia (KIBO Cheese)

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Looking ahead

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Asked what would help next, Vicky pointed to trust between trading counterparties, a mechanism where funds sit with a trusted intermediary until shipped goods are verified against the order, protecting buyer and supplier equally.

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It is a useful reminder of what cross-border payments actually are for a growing F&B business: not a treasury function, but the thing standing between a purchase order and product on the shelf.

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