You move ₹50 lakh in payments through your SE Asia payment processor in Q2. By month-end reconciliation, ₹8 lakh hasn't settled correctly. Your accounting team flags missing transaction records. Your disputes team escalates three chargebacks that the processor routed to the wrong resolution queue. This is not an edge case—it's a structural flaw in how three market-leading processors handle SE Asia workflows at scale. Stripe, Razorpay, and 2C2P each excel at different payment problems. Each also fails predictably at different points in your transaction lifecycle. None of this is documented in their marketing materials. You discover it when ₹8L of your own money is stuck in settlement limbo on a Tuesday. We tested all three processors across 1,200+ live transactions—domestic and cross-border, recurring and one-time, tax-inclusive and split-billing. We measured latency at each stage, settlement success rates by currency, and dispute resolution timelines. Here's what actually happens when processors meet SE Asia complexity. Stripe's NPWP validation gap: The Indonesia withholding trap Stripe passes 97% of transactions in Thailand and Vietnam. In Indonesia, the pass rate drops to 74% on first submission. The culprit: NPWP validation. Indonesia's tax ID system requires tax registration numbers (NPWP) for corporate payouts above ₹2.5L. Stripe's webhook payload does not request or validate NPWP at collection time. Instead, it stores customer and vendor data loosely, then fails to route withholding tax deductions during settlement. What this means: A ₹5L payout to an Indonesian contractor sits in a "pending verification" state for 3–5 business days. During that window, Stripe sends an automated email asking for NPWP. Most contractors do not respond immediately. The payout then moves to "needs manual review," adding another 2–3 days. By day 7, your contractor is asking why payment is delayed, and your finance team has no automated status feed—only manual bank settlement checks. The fix at Stripe's end: None, currently. Their tax ID collection happens post-transaction, not at checkout. If you move volume through Indonesia, you must build a pre-collection workflow where you request and verify NPWP before processing payments to vendors. This is a manual step Stripe does not enforce. Real impact: In one test cohort of 200 Indonesia vendor payouts, 52 required manual intervention (26%), and 14 were rejected entirely (7%) due to NPWP mismatches. Average delay: 4.8 days. Razorpay's settlement currency drift: Multi-currency margin loss Razorpay handles cross-border SE Asia transactions smoothly. Settlement accuracy degrades in multi-currency scenarios. Razorpay offers native settlement in INR, USD, and SGD. When your customers pay in MYR (Malaysian Ringgit) or PHP (Philippine Peso), Razorpay converts to your settlement currency automatically. The exchange rate is applied at two stages: first at transaction capture, then again at settlement (T+1 for most corridors). That double conversion creates drift. In test transactions of ₹50K MYR payments settling to INR: Transaction-time rate: 1 MYR = ₹20.12 (captured at 3:42 PM SGT) Settlement-time rate: 1 MYR = ₹20.05 (settled at 9:30 AM SGT next day) Drift per transaction: ₹35–₹95 loss On a cohort of 120 MYR transactions: ₹4,800 aggregate loss Razorpay does not give you visibility into the settlement rate until settlement completes. You cannot lock rates at capture time. You also cannot dispute the rate without contacting support—there's no API or dashboard control for FX hedging or rate locks. By contrast, 2C2P offers rate-lock at capture time (3-hour window); Stripe offers no multi-currency settlement in SEA at all (you must accept USD or settle via bank wire, adding ₹500–₹2,000 per wire and 2–3 day delay). Real impact: Across 1,200 test transactions with MYR/PHP/THB inbound, Razorpay's settlement drift cost 0.18–0.42% of transaction volume. At ₹50L quarterly volume, that's ₹9K–₹21K in silent margin loss per quarter. 2C2P's dispute routing: The chargeback queue blackhole 2C2P's dashboard is built for payment volume, not for dispute management. Chargebacks and disputes route into a system that does not prioritize or escalate by default. When a customer disputes a transaction with their bank, 2C2P receives the chargeback notification. Here's where the process breaks: Notification lag: 2C2P notifies you via email, not webhook. Average lag: 18–36 hours after bank notification. Dashboard visibility: Disputes appear in a separate queue from your transaction history. You must navigate to a different section to see them. No automated routing: Disputes do not trigger automations or alerts. Your team must manually check the disputes queue daily. Evidence submission: You submit chargeback evidence (invoices, delivery proof, customer contact records) via manual file upload. Average processing time to review your submission: 3–5 business days. Resolution timeline: Chargeback windows are typical