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A dedicated global payments platform can help you meet your customers’ needs by supporting their growth with efficient, cost-effective transactions and innovative features. It can also eliminate the operational and regulatory pain points that might otherwise stand in your way, especially when you choose the right global payments partner.
Here are the six ways a cross-border payments platform can transform enterprises:
Current expectations for financial services
Amid ongoing economic uncertainty—stoked by rising interest rates, high inflation, and turbulent geopolitics—many banking customers are reassessing their financial relationships. They’re opening new accounts at twice the usual rate, and 20% are actively considering switching financial institutions in favor of more comprehensive services and a more seamless digital experience.
Whether you’re a bank, neobank, fintech, foreign exchange (FX) broker, or payments provider, that means competition is fierce to get (and keep) customers’ business, especially as their financial service needs expand into new, international markets.
One promising path forward is optimizing your global payments strategy. Despite economic unrest, the globalisation of trade and capital has shown no signs of slowing down. In fact, it's expanding. Cross-border payments volumes are currently growing by double digits year over year, exceeding $150 trillion in 2022 alone.
What a global payments platform can do
Fortunately, cross-border payments are no longer limited to traditional methods like international bank transfers and wires, which can be slow, costly, risky, and filled with manual processes.
Advances in financial technology have led to new opportunities in the form of embedded finance—that is, API-powered financial solutions that can be integrated directly into your platform.
When it comes to global payments, companies like PingPong are leading the charge with high-speed local rail networks and automated regulatory infrastructures that abstract away the burdens of compliance.
Here are six ways that partnering with a specialized platform—and taking a tech-forward approach to global payments—can help you delight your customers, boost your bottom line, and confront some of your most pressing economic concerns.
1. Diversify financial services
Innovative features are front of mind for modern customers. According to a McKinsey survey, 60% of customers in developed markets (and 80% in emerging markets) would increase their use of a digital finance platform if new features were added, with instant transfers and virtual cards topping the list.
Embedding global payments tools into your platform enables you to offer a range of new services almost immediately. That includes local collection accounts and connected digital wallets—which allow your customers to store, send, receive, and manage funds in multiple currencies—as well as real-time transactions and virtual multi-currency cards.
Local collection accounts can be particularly powerful. They empower your business customers to collect and hold payments from foreign trade in local currencies so they can avoid the cost and hassle of opening accounts at overseas banks and converting funds back and forth at inflated FX rates just to pay local service providers.
Better still, all of the technological infrastructure is built directly into your back end, so your customers can leverage these new features and functions without ever leaving your platform.
This doesn’t just benefit your customers; it also benefits you. In an unpredictable economy, industry experts at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recommend using long-term, sustainable growth strategies (like diversifying sources of revenue) to ensure your stability.
Enhancing your cross-border payments capabilities can help you tap into new revenue streams through greater transaction volumes, account management needs, and card issuing opportunities, ultimately lowering customer acquisition costs and amplifying customer lifetime value.
2. Bring new products quickly to market
Introducing new cross-border payments capabilities is essential to expanding your services, but developing them in-house can take a substantial toll on your time and resources. This is the main reason why third-party global payments providers exist.
Rather than building and maintaining global payments networks and technologies rail by rail—with all of the required licences and compliance programs that entails—you can lean on a reliable platform that has them already developed at scale.
The best global payments providers not only offer broad payments networks, they’re fully regulated and licensed in every region of operation, so they can quickly take your business anywhere it needs to go.
Some even have on-the-ground experience across different regions, so they can help you navigate unfamiliar markets and policies and customize solutions to fit your desired use case.
Instead of worrying about technical details, error handling, and complex international bureaucracies, you can focus on mounting an effective go-to-market strategy and maximizing the impact and profits of your upgraded roadmap.
3. Unlock new payment channels
Several factors are reshaping international trade patterns, including escalating global conflicts, extreme weather events caused by worsening climate change, and lingering supply-chain disruptions following the COVID-19 pandemic.
That means, to run a smart financial operation, you need access to the widest possible network of payments rails built with reputable banking partners, so you and your customers can conduct business in new regions at the drop of a hat.
This is especially important in burgeoning supply-side markets and access points like China, India, Vietnam, and Singapore, which also happen to have especially tight currency controls.
If you want to open payment channels in these regions, you need an experienced partner to guide you—or you risk being shut out. China, for instance, has a limited number of payment licences currently in circulation, and its central bank is not issuing new ones.
PingPong is a global partner with an established network of local rails and a high success rate of completed transactions—particularly in emerging markets experiencing rapid growth—so important cross-border payments aren’t just achievable, but assured.
4. Reduce transaction costs
If you’re not working with a dedicated global payments platform, you’re likely paying too much for cross-border transactions. Those high costs then trickle down to your customers, representing the single most common cause of churn.
In total, 60% of enterprises report paying $10 to $50 in cross-border fees per transaction using traditional global payments processors, with 23% paying over $50. That can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees over the course of a year—and it’s not always clear what providers are charging for.
On the other hand, embedded global payments solutions offer you the ability to issue local collection accounts and virtual multi-currency accounts, which your customers can use to collect and/or pay out funds in local currency. That means they can bypass FX fees altogether—or convert at more competitive rates.
A specialized solution like PingPong takes a comprehensive, one-stop approach to global payments, so you won’t need to cobble together many different providers (each with its own price tag) to get the coverage you need.
5. Accelerate global payments
Cross-border payments have historically been slow, and long wait times remain the most painful source of friction in international trade. A vast majority of multinational businesses regularly experience money movement delays of 2 to 10 days or more, undermining their financial experiences and their trust in financial institutions.
You can gain a competitive advantage by offering your customers faster payments along high-speed local rails through a global payments platform’s API—rather than forcing them to rely on inefficient bank transfers and wires.
Industry-leading platforms also offer real-time transaction monitoring, allowing you and your customers to track the status of each payment from end to end and instantly know if, where, and why a delay occurs.
6. Automate regulatory compliance
You may want a cross-border payments solution that’s efficient and cost-effective, but you need one that’s honest and secure.
Regulatory compliance isn’t optional, and having even one transaction flagged for fraud or data integrity issues can lead to serious consequences like fines, operational suspensions, and even legal charges.
In short, your compliance program can make or break your global payments strategy—not to mention your business’s reputation—especially at a time when customer trust is already foundering in the wake of high-profile bank collapses and regulatory scandals.
Working with an expert third-party solution can help you outsource compliance to a vetted partner that’s not only fully licensed but also up to speed with the latest international exchange rules, data policies, and payment standards—so you don’t have to be.
Choosing the right global payments partner
While there are a number of API-powered, embedded cross-border payments solutions on the market, it can be hard to find one that excels in all of the above categories.
PingPong does. We offer everything a modern financial institution needs to launch a successful global payments strategy at scale, all in a single platform. That includes:
The ability to create a frictionless ecosystem of local accounts and multi-currency digital wallets so your customers can make direct payments, collect and withdraw funds, and manage balances in local currencies.
A network of high-speed local payment rails in 40+ global markets, plus international SWIFT transfers in 200+ countries and strong relationships with trusted banking partners.
Unique coverage in high-growth markets, including China, India, Singapore, and Vietnam.
A fully regulated reliance model, with licences in all regions of operation and the ability to handle all due diligence, KYC, and other compliance obligations.
Competitive FX rates that decrease at higher volumes.
Value-added services and features for your customers like programmatic, multi-currency virtual cards, which can be used at merchant locations worldwide.
Full transparency into transaction, fund, and account flows to reduce your AML risk.
Flexible APIs for highly customized solutions to your cross-border payments needs—plus simple, off-the-shelf web portals that can get you started on common use cases right away.
We don’t just throw API docs your way and expect you to figure it out. We help you tailor solutions to your specific use case and build quickly, with code snippets and other tools that simplify the integration process. Plus, we provide extensive support, which includes:
30+ offices worldwide for assistance in your preferred language and time zone, as well as accessible, in-country operations, first-hand experience in each market, and in-house FX.