Case study
HEYTEA brews up global expansion with Adyen
HEYTEA's journey to bring new-style tea worldwide hit roadblocks with international payments. Discover how Adyen's partnership delivered seamless, localized solutions, turning expansion challenges into a global success story and helping HEYTEA scale confidently.
Powering the global growth of a new-style tea brand
In 2023, the global market size of the new-style tea market was US$20 billion. By 2032, it’s expected to reach an estimated US$35 billion. The market is clearly brewing with success.
As competition intensifies in China, leading brands like HEYTEA are looking beyond China’s borders for growth opportunities. Since launching its first overseas store in Singapore in 2018, HEYTEA has been accelerating its global expansion, adding stores in the Unites States, the UK, Australia, Canada, South Korea, and Hong Kong SAR.
Navigating global markets invites its own set of challenges, especially when it comes to payments. HEYTEA needed a partner who could provide seamless, localized payments solutions to create a smooth and consistent checkout experience for customers worldwide. With Adyen’s global reach and all-in-one payments platform, HEYTEA found the perfect fit. Today, Adyen supports payments across more than 40 HEYTEA stores worldwide, helping the brand scale efficiently and confidently.
Adyen helps HEYTEA take the lead in global expansion
Expanding into new markets requires a deep understanding of local payments preferences. Adyen holds local acquiring licenses across multiple markets, and our payments experts are well versed in complex regulations to help businesses like HEYTEA boost authorization rates and reduce costs. This ensures HEYTEA can integrate locally preferred payment methods in each new market, making transactions easy and familiar for customers. For example, when HEYTEA opened stores in the UK, Adyen’s China team provided around-the-clock support to resolve urgent payments issues. Similarly, in Singapore, faced with challenges that could not be solved remotely, Adyen quickly mobilized local resources to provide on-site assistance, ensuring a smooth launch.
Beyond on-the-ground support, connectivity issues presented another challenge. Differences in network infrastructure meant that checkout processes varied in speed and stability across regions. Adyen’s payments terminals can support networks such as Wi-Fi, 4G, and Ethernet, enabling HEYTEA to quickly identify and deploy the most stable network solutions for the payments terminals at each location. This reduces disruptions and improves transaction efficiency.
Looking ahead, Adyen plans to help HEYTEA optimize its payments experience by upgrading its integration model. A move toward more direct, localized cloud communication will minimize potential disruptions caused by inconsistent network infrastructure, ensuring reliable and frictionless transactions for customers.
Bridging online and offline payments
HEYTEA’s vision for global expansion goes beyond just physical stores. The brand aims to create a unified, omnichannel shopping experience for customers, whether purchasing in-store, via the HEYTEA GO app, or through WeChat.
Adyen’s all-in-one platform helps HEYTEA bridge the gap between online and offline payments, enabling HEYTEA to make smart business decisions with comprehensive and accurate insights while providing seamless, integrated checkout experiences for consumers. This means:
1. Online: Customers can use WeChat Pay within the HEYTEA GO App and WeChat Mini Programs, maintaining a consistent and familiar payments experience, even when shopping internationally.
2. Offline: Through in-depth conversations with HEYTEA and a strong understanding of their needs, HEYTEA stores are equipped with Adyen’s advanced payments terminals, including Adyen's S1F2 and V400C Plus, tailored to local payments preferences. Shop staff also have access to Adyen’s simplified merchant backend (Customer Area Essentials), allowing them to manage transactions and reporting effortlessly.
For overseas shops: Adyen’s Customer Area Essentials provides comprehensive digital management, enabling quick transaction overviews, report downloading, and more. This simplifies reconciliation while reducing labor and time spent.
For headquarters: Adyen’s centralized merchant backend offers a real-time overview of global transactions, with data breakdowns by market and store. This eliminates the need for manual reconciliation, making financial operations more efficient and transparent.
A future-proofed payments strategy
HEYTEA’s partnership with Adyen has helped to provide efficient, stable, and frictionless payments operations across the markets it operates in.
“Adyen’s single platform solution helped us quickly clear the way for overseas payments. When we need to open a new store overseas, the whole process, from initiating the project to implementing checkout in the store, is very efficient. Adyen’s professionalism in rapidly implementing in-store payments solutions allows us to go to market confidently and bring a better consumer experience for China's new-style tea drinks to global consumers.” - HEYTEA representative.
Warren Hayashi, Adyen’s President of Asia-Pacific, echoes this sentiment, “It is an honor to be a partner of HEYTEA and many overseas enterprises in their global expansion. In the process of working with HEYTEA, we established rapport at the beginning, and they showed strong problem-solving capabilities later in the implementation process. In the future, we look forward to deepening our partnership with HEYTEA to bring consumers around the world a more relaxed and enjoyable payments experience.”
Adyen is proud to play an active role in HEYTEA’s global expansion efforts. Aaron Zhu, Senior Implementation Manager, Adyen China, who has been responsible for the entire HEYTEA project, explains how Adyen continues to support ongoing challenges.
“Thanks to HEYTEA’s close collaboration with Adyen, whether in the early stage of the project or in the subsequent implementation service, we can solve various problems for them quickly and efficiently. I’m looking forward to going to Singapore for a cup of HEYTEA again!”
Aaron Zhu
Senior Implementation Manager, Adyen China
With Adyen’s rich experience in international payments, we are committed to helping Chinese enterprises expand into global markets. By tapping into our expertise and cutting-edge payments solutions, we help businesses like HEYTEA reach a global audience, one transaction at a time.