Blogs
The last three years have revealed the resilience and need for travel companies to evolve from the antiquated processes that have hindered their capabilities to expand. Digital payment strategies and expansion continue to accelerate in the industry, along with the demand for international flights and online travel providers, digital wallets, and digital cards. Today, it’s vital that businesses within the travel industry seek and adopt digital payment strategies to achieve continuous growth.
TerraPay has been at the forefront of fintech disruption in B2B cross-border payments. In this interview with Flagship Advisory Partners, Ram Sundaram, Co-founder & COO, TerraPay walks us through the company’s journey so far, sharing his views on the current scale of fintech disruption and what success in the B2B cross-border payments market looks like.
As the travel and hospitality industries across the world recover from the impact of the pandemic, online travel agents (OTAs) are playing a pivotal part in the revival. Their efforts directly benefit millions of SMEs in the global travel and tourism trade. The rapid rise of OTAs presents a striking picture of the era of global digital transformation.
While hardly a new technology, virtual cards are poised to become a much more dominant force in the payment sphere in the coming years.
Founded in 2014, TerraPay is an international payment network that connects mobile wallet service providers, money transfer operators, merchants, banks and payment platforms to enable seamless, cross-border transfer of funds for both B2B and B2C transactions.
We all learned from the pandemic that diversification in the travel industry is crucial to success. It came in as a force of nature that unraveled traditional industry processes. It opened the doors to many new possibilities. Most of all, it heightened the need to generate income from various streams, while optimizing payment strategies.
It’s common knowledge that both opportunities and challenges are two sides of the same coin. The countries in the WCA region exemplify the concept of opportunities and challenges being two sides of the same coin. On the one hand, there are significant opportunities, such as rising economic expansion and an improving entrepreneurial landscape. On the other hand, there are also major challenges, such as inadequate infrastructure, including the payments industry.
TBe it overseas workers, globe-trotters or expatriates, every cohort relies on cross-border remittances to either send money back home or receive funds from their family. But understanding the intricacies of cross-border remittance payments is essential for both individuals and institutions undertaking international monetary transactions.
The World Bank and KNOMAD (Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development) published their latest report in June 2023, ‘Remittances Remain Resilient but Are Slowing; Migration and Development Brief 38’. The Migration and Development report captures key developments in remittance flows that have occurred since the previous brief in November 2022.
In today’s digitally-driven world, the way we send and receive payments has undergone a radical transformation. Legacy payment modes such as cash and checks have been almost entirely replaced by electronic transactions as well as payments via cards and digital wallets. Considering this paradigm shift in payment mechanisms, the significance of building and sustaining an efficient and secure payment infrastructure is paramount.
Propelled by rapidly changing consumer demands, digital wallets have emerged as one of the fastest-growing financial tools for both individuals and businesses. Considering the ubiquity of mobile phones, digital wallets offer a wide range of digital-first capabilities that bring ease of use, transparency, and an enhanced user experience.
Technology and innovation have provided an incredible impetus to digital transformation in Latin America’s payment industry. With a total addressable market of over 600 million consumers that generates close to 6 Trillion dollars of the GDP, Latin America has opened doors for exciting opportunities in the payment industry.
In today’s increasingly digital world, a strong payment infrastructure is critical, especially for businesses looking to offer seamless and secure payment experiences to their customers. From accepting online payments to managing transactions and payment processing, a robust payment infrastructure is key to ensuring smooth financial operations. With the rise in digital adoption, cyber security threats and risks of payment fraud are also, unfortunately, on the rise. What are the best ways to tackle this? In the following sections, I have listed down some of the best practices for building a secure and reliable payment infrastructure. Read on.
For decades, money transfers received from people working abroad have acted as lifelines of development for many emerging nations. Given their impact, the socioeconomic benefits of MSBs (money service businesses) have been widely acknowledged. Typically, MSBs permit their customers to transfer money, and exchange currencies or cash cheques without needing to rely on bank accounts.
Payment infrastructure evolves on a minute-by-minute basis. It is what makes payments such an exciting field to work in and a great environment for anyone who likes to continuously innovate and learn, especially about how the payment infrastructure is evolving to meet the needs of global businesses.
Increasing globalisation has expanded huge economic opportunities for people residing in South Asia. Many economies here are driven by remittances which also form a sizable portion of their GDPs. People working in different parts of the world send money back to their families residing here.
There are numerous studies that discuss what Gen Z—loosely defined as those who were born between 1997 and 2012—wants. While the majority of these studies cover a wide range of topics, there are a few aspects that they tend to ignore, including confusion, the need for inspiration, safe risk-taking, and impulsive decision-making.
Latin America is one of the most exciting regions to follow for innovation in the financial sector and the emerging fintech ecosystem. Updates to infrastructure through open banking initiatives, embedded finance, Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), and more are helping to bring payments and banking to those underserved by the existing financial system.
There is no doubt that globalisation has been an incredible driving force in recent decades, powering businesses to transcend national and international borders. But the benefits of globalisation are also accompanied by certain responsibilities such as the need to comply with local laws. Without comprehensive compliance, it is merely a matter of time before any company’s business operations begin to unravel.
Today, the growing global banking solutions market is like an ocean replete with diverse products and players. As financial firms across the globe strive to capture a major share of this market, the words of Japanese writer Ryunosuke Satoro spring to mind:
According to industry predictions, real-time payments (RTP) represent the future of the evolving payments ecosystem. Influenced by the pandemic, RTP’s share of transactions doubled in the US in 2020, as reported by ACI Worldwide. By 2025, the report estimates that RTPs will have a CAGR of 43.4% with 6.2 billion extra transactions.¹
As our society becomes more globalized, there will soon be no borders for capital. Globally, the amount of money being sent as remittances has seen significant growth as a direct result of increased migration as well as expanded business activity on a worldwide scale.
The world of cross-border payments is complex, to say the least. When such payments or remittances need to be made across 100+ countries across the globe, the complexity is further compounded.
Worldwide, as steps are underway to boost financial inclusion, the
measures are benefitting millions of underbanked people. Finally, underserved cohorts are
gaining access to savings accounts, investments, loans, and other financial products. To
achieve an objective based on user convenience, technology is being used to drive
financial inclusion across all geographies, including remote regions.
Contrary to what many people automatically assume, the beginning of any
partner relationship in the payments industry is not only about KYC and compliance.
Although KYC is a cornerstone of our industry, and we won’t survive long if we don’t get
it right, the start of the relationship is much more.
In a global economy, the ability to make borderless payments is
essential for businesses and consumers alike. Moving money successfully across borders
is fundamental to international commerce as it drives and sustains economies in
developed and emerging markets. Cross-border payments are the oil that keeps the
globalization machine going.
Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of buzz around
interoperability. Getting payment products to ‘speak to each other’ or be interoperable
is one of the biggest challenges facing digital payments.
Global payments will continue to grow and evolve as borders become
increasingly irrelevant to consumers, whether you’re in the Business-to-Consumer or
Business-to-Business market. While most people think of e-commerce and online
shopping
in the Business-to-Consumer market as the most relevant, Business-to-Business global
payments have been growing rapidly.
The global digital payments market is evolving rapidly. Africa is
one
of the key regions at the forefront of this evolution with digital payments methods
steadily rising across the region.
The mobile wallet market is slated to increase at a 25% CAGR
between
2022 and 2028. One of the major drivers for this universal rise is the increasing
number
of smartphone users globally. As per Statista, global smartphone subscriptions in
2022
have already *surpassed six billion, with the highest number of subscribers in
China,
India and the US.
For us, International Women’s Day is not just a celebration of
women’s
history but also an opportunity to start a dialogue. This year we did exactly that
and
discovered what our global workforce has to say about breaking stereotypes and
enabling
equality.
