Cross-Border Payments Help Businesses Compete in Our Connected World

From embracing fully remote workers based anywhere in the world to trading multi-day flights for the convenience of meeting clients on Zoom, the way we conduct international business has transformed over the past couple of years. Yes, the pandemic and current geopolitical climate are responsible for many of these changes, but so is the advancement of digital technology that helps businesses stay connected to their workers and customers anywhere in the world. Whether you’re paying cruise ship employees that travel across borders every day or creative workers taking advantage of the work-from-anywhere capabilities our digital economy allows, businesses today need fast, convenient, and secure ways to pay their workforces.

How those businesses disburse money across borders is critical to this changing landscape. According to a 2022 whitepaper from EY, the cross-border payments landscape is “ripe for disruption,” with B2C transactions accounting for $156 trillion worth of flows. Today, fintechs such as Onbe are deploying technologies that make it simpler and more cost-effective for domestic companies to pay their international recipients. Onbe’s cross-border payments solution, which includes FX Transfers and International ACH payment methods, streamlines the entire payment process—from funding to reconciliation to reporting. The results are cross-border disbursements that arrive in as little as a single business day and can be transferred to more than 175 countries and more than 145 major, minor, and exotic currencies. Recipients enjoy accelerated delivery timelines, self-service features, and choice of payment.

A smoother payment experience is key to retaining workers both across borders and closer to home—especially when those workers have plenty of options. Randstad found that 62% of workers around the world rank salary as their primary motivator for changing jobs. And for guest workers, there’s an additional consideration: how to get that money home. The cost of sending USD 200 to low- and middle-income countries using traditional methods is approximately 7%, or $14, and funds can take days to arrive. Making it faster and more affordable to transfer funds to an international bank account can help improve worker satisfaction—and lets them keep or send more of their hard-earned funds.

Global payment capabilities are also important to other types of nontraditional workers. In Onbe’s 2023 Future of Payments study, we found that 100% of gig workers in the U.S. say the option to exchange funds to a foreign currency is valuable to them.    Given these preferences for digital payment technologies, there are inevitably greater demands on businesses to deliver modern payment experiences, anywhere in the world, that are fast, secure, and convenient – whether they are paying guest workers, gig workers, influencers, or even consumers in emerging markets.

The opportunity for fintechs like Onbe is to leverage innovative product development while working within regulatory frameworks to make it possible for organizations to meet these changing expectations. Digital infrastructure and automated processes that adhere to anti-money laundering and other regulations enable fast, secure and convenient cross-border payments and disbursements. These developments mean that payments are one less piece of the puzzle businesses need to figure out when serving their clients around the world; it’s now much simpler to meet consumers and workforces wherever they are.

Learn more about Onbe's global payment solution.