Cross-border payments keep international business running. The global value of cross-border payments is projected to climb to over $250 trillion by 2027, an increase of more than $100 trillion in just 10 years. Historically, these payments were often delayed or expensive, but newer international money movement technologies are making transactions faster, more predictable, and more cost-efficient.

Below, you’ll learn how international transactions are handled today, what new technologies are improving the industry, and what kinds of regulatory and logistical challenges these technologies face.

What’s in this article?

• What are cross-border payments?
  
• How do businesses process international transactions today?
  
• What technologies enable faster and lower-cost cross-border payments?
  
• What advantages do modern cross-border systems provide to global businesses?
  
• What regulatory and operational challenges complicate international transfers?
  
• How can organizations select the right cross-border payment partner?
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What are cross-border payments?

A cross-border payment is any financial transaction where the payer and recipient are based in different nations. These flows can be business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), consumer-to-business (C2B), or peer-to-peer (P2P). What makes them different from domestic payments are the extra steps involved, such as currency conversion, multiple intermediaries, and compliance checks. Much of the international economy—such as trade, digital marketplaces, and remote work—depends on the ability to move money easily across borders.

How do businesses process international transactions today?

Cross-border payments still move through financial systems using outdated infrastructure.

The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) transmits payment instructions between banks but doesn’t move the money itself. When the sender’s bank and the recipient’s bank don’t have a direct relationship, cross-border payments must move through a sequence of banks. Each intermediary runs its own checks, adjusts internal ledgers, charges a fee, and passes the payment forward, which adds time and cost.

A large share of cross-border payments also occurs via card networks. In these cases, the card issuer handles currency conversion behind the scenes but then charges businesses fees for that service. In addition, every jurisdiction has its own data requirements, processing hours, and compliance standards, which means a payment that moves smoothly through one corridor can be delayed in another.

What technologies enable faster and lower-cost cross-border payments?

A wave of newer technologies is making international payments faster, cheaper, and far more predictable than the systems they’re replacing.

Here’s how:

• Real-time payment networks: Many countries now run instant domestic payment systems, and some are beginning to connect those systems across borders. When two real-time networks can hand payments off directly, transactions bypass the batch schedules and time zone delays that used to stall international transfers.

• Digital wallets and regional direct debit systems: Digital wallets and regional clearing systems, such as the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), support cross-border movement within specific markets. This provides businesses with low-cost options in regions that operate with shared rules or currencies.

• API-based payments infrastructure: Application programming interfaces (APIs) let banks, fintech platforms, and currency providers exchange information instantly rather than through batch files and manual handoffs. This means payments can be created, routed, tracked, and reconciled automatically. The system chooses the fastest or lowest-cost path in real time and shows payment status to both sender and recipient.

• Blockchain and stablecoin-based settlement: Distributed ledgers make it possible to move value without relying on chains of correspondent banks, which eliminates intermediary fees and restrictions on operating hours. In particular, stablecoins enable nearly instant settlement 24/7.

• Virtual accounts and multicurrency wallets: Many modern platforms give businesses virtual accounts that function like local bank accounts in multiple countries. These accounts allow them to hold, receive, and send funds in different currencies without opening bank accounts in each market.

• AI-driven routing and compliance: Machine learning models can identify the fastest paths for a transaction by scanning large volumes of historical payment data, taking into account geography, currency, bank availability, and risk signals. The same systems strengthen compliance by flagging unusual patterns, automating sanctions checks, and minimizing false positives.

What advantages do modern cross-border systems provide to global businesses?

When cross-border payments work better, they impact cash flow, pricing, product strategy, and how businesses structure teams and partnerships.

Here are some of the advantages:

• Tighter cash cycles and leaner working capital: Faster settlement and clearer timing let teams forecast inflows and outflows with more confidence. Extra liquidity can be redirected into inventory, marketing, or product instead of sitting idle as a cushion against slow wire transfers.

• More flexible pricing and foreign exchange (FX) strategy: Access to live FX rates, multicurrency balances, and better control over when conversions happen give businesses more room to experiment with pricing. You can bill in local currencies, delay conversion to a better rate window, or match inflows and outflows in the same currency corridor to reduce exposure—without building a full treasury team.

• Cleaner books and faster close: Detailed payment data, consistent formats, and real-time status updates can reduce the number of “mystery” items that show up in reconciliation, such as why a supplier received less than expected or where an invoice payment disappeared. Finance teams see exact fees, time stamps, and reference IDs, which can shorten month-end close and minimize manual cleanup.

• Easier scaling: Automating routing, compliance checks, and payout workflows means payment volume can increase across markets and you won’t need to grow your finance or operations team as much.

What regulatory and operational challenges complicate international transfers?

Moving money across borders means complying with multiple regulatory environments at once, and each one has its own rules, formats, and expectations.

Here’s an overview:

• Different compliance regimes across countries: Each jurisdiction enforces its own mix of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks, sanctions, and reporting requirements. A single payment might be screened several times by different institutions. These overlapping checks are necessary but often slow things down, especially when documentation requests aren’t aligned across countries.

• Uneven Know Your Customer (KYC) expectations: What counts as acceptable identification or proof of purpose in one market might not in another. That mismatch can lead to manual reviews, delays, or rejections, even when both parties are fully legitimate.

• Inconsistent data formats and technical standards: Payments still move through systems with varying character limits, field structures, and messaging formats, which means data can get truncated or transformed in transit. Small inconsistencies can cause compliance alerts or require human intervention.

• Limited operating hours and time zone gaps: Many domestic payment systems don’t run 24/7 so a transfer that leaves 1 country instantly might sit idle in another until the receiving system opens. These pauses can introduce FX risk and stretch a straightforward payment across several days.

• Local rules and capital controls: Some countries require purpose-of-payment codes, tax documentation, or caps on outbound transfers, and missing any one of those details can halt a transaction.

How can organizations select the right cross-border payment partner?

The right cross-border payment partner handles payment networks, regulations, and FX considerations in a system your team can use with ease.

Here’s what it should offer:

• Coverage that matches your road map: Determine where a partner can send and receive funds, in which currencies, and through which local payment methods.

• Speed, reliability, and clear service-level agreements: Ask potential partners for their on-time delivery performance, how they route payments when a payment network is down, and how they track and resolve exceptions.

• Transparent pricing: Strong partners show you fees and FX markups up front and give you tools to control when conversions happen.

• Built-in compliance and security: A partner with serious compliance infrastructure—such as licenses in relevant jurisdictions, automated screening, and well-tested controls—can reduce the chance of payments being held or rejected.

• Ease of integration and workflow fit: APIs, bulk payout tools, and clean dashboards are important. They determine how much time your team spends managing payments. Look for features such as automated reconciliation, multiuser permissions, and audit-friendly reporting.

• Scalability without added overhead: The best partners handle surges, add new corridors frequently, and keep improving routing logic.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payment solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world. Businesses can accept stablecoin payments globally that settle as fiat in their Stripe balances.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, including stablecoins and crypto.

• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.

• Improve payment performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.

• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% historical uptime and industry-leading reliability.

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.