Doing business across borders is no longer just for Fortune 500 companies. More companies are entering new markets earlier and faster, which means they’re encountering more compliance obligations earlier, too. What starts as a few tax filings and financial reports can quickly turn into a patchwork of data privacy rules, anti-fraud laws, and country-specific reporting calendars.

A 2025 PwC survey found that 85% of business executives felt that compliance requirements have become more complex in the last 3 years. Companies need infrastructure that enables them to expand without their systems breaking down. Below is a practical guide to global compliance and reporting that’s built for scale.

What’s in this article?

• Why is global compliance so important for international businesses?
  
• How should businesses handle global reporting obligations?
  
• What are the rules that shape international compliance?
  
• How can businesses design a flexible global compliance strategy?
  
• What are the challenges of managing global compliance?
  

Why is global compliance so important for international businesses?

For international businesses, compliance is a core part of operations. Every market presents a new set of rules—tax, labor, payments, data privacy, and anti-corruption. Staying compliant allows you to scale globally without running into problems on the local level.

Here’s why global compliance is so important.

It lets you operate legally

In every country your business enters, you face a new legal environment. If you miss a tax filing, ignore a labor law, or fail to register correctly with a regulator, you can face fines and serious business interruption.

Global compliance protects against:

• Government fines and legal sanctions

• License suspensions or revoked market access

• The risk of being publicly flagged or blacklisted

Expansion without compliance guardrails is a high-risk move. Even well-intentioned businesses can encounter trouble if they don’t have strong processes in place.

It sends a signal to customers, partners, and regulators

Customers expect businesses to protect their data and process their payments securely, no matter where the company is based. Partners want to know they’re working with someone who’s not going to bring risk into the relationship. Regulators need to see clean books and prompt reporting.

When done right, compliance signals that you take customer data seriously, operate transparently, and don’t cut corners.

It grants access to new markets

Some markets won’t let you operate unless you meet local standards for reporting, licensing, or data handling. Others might allow entry but keep you out of specific industries or customer groups unless you show proof of compliance.

It reduces risk at scale

The more markets you enter, the more rules you need to follow. A well-built compliance foundation reduces the risk that the way you hire, file, report, and transact in one country will cause problems in another. Compliance prevents small issues from spiraling, makes audits less painful, and lets your team move faster with fewer surprises.

It reinforces internal standards and ethics

Strong external compliance tends to reflect strong internal governance. Businesses that prioritize compliance usually also build cultures of accountability, transparency, and ethical decision-making.

That influences:

• How you handle customer complaints

• How managers make decisions

• How employees speak up when something’s wrong

Compliance is a system for making good decisions, even and especially in high-stakes situations with complicated rules.

How should businesses handle global reporting obligations?

Reporting obligations can accumulate fast when you’re operating in more than one country. Financial statements, tax filings, and regulatory disclosures vary by jurisdiction and can come with different formats, deadlines, and compliance standards. Managing them all requires structure, foresight, and the right systems.

Here’s how companies should address global reporting obligations.

Map out every requirement, everywhere you operate

Start by getting a full view of what’s required in each country. Include:

• Annual financial statements (and the format they need to be in)

• Tax filings for corporate income tax, value-added tax (VAT), goods and services tax (GST), and payroll taxes

• Industry-specific reports or disclosures (e.g., those required in fintech, healthcare, or energy)

• Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) or sustainability reporting, if mandated

Maintaining a central source of truth—whether that’s a calendar, a dashboard, or a shared internal wiki—helps your team track obligations and deliver on time.

Build consistent processes for collecting data

Reporting breaks down when data is messy, inconsistent, or siloed. If your reporting depends on a dozen spreadsheets and email chains, something will probably fall through the cracks eventually.

To report effectively across countries, businesses should:

• Standardize how data is collected

• Use systems that centralize this data and make it accessible

• Apply controls to ensure accuracy before they file reports

Use automation wherever possible

Manual reporting can be risky and time-consuming. Automated systems can:

• Pull data directly from your transaction records, payments platforms, or accounting tools

• Convert that data into local reporting formats

• Flag anomalies before submission

• Generate recurring filings on a set schedule

For example, if you use Stripe to process payments globally, you get reconciled reports that already account for local taxes, fees, and currency conversion. That kind of built-in visibility makes it easier to feed clean data into your financial or tax reports.

Assign clear roles and repeatable processes

Even with great systems, you need defined ownership. Figure out who’s preparing, reviewing, and submitting each report.

Standard operating procedures such as documented workflows, internal checklists, and approval steps help with this process. This structure scales so when your company enters a new market, you’re not reinventing the process from scratch.

Balance global consistency with local expertise

Local requirements won’t always match your global systems. You might need local specialists to:

• Translate reports into the required language

• Work on region-specific electronic filing platforms

• Interpret ambiguous or changing rules

Your global team can drive consistency while local teams adapt to edge cases and ensure filings are locally compliant.

Stay ahead of rule changes

Regulations shift all the time. Don’t wait for a missed filing to find out something changed. Subscribe to legal or compliance update services, work with local advisers in higher-risk markets, and schedule regular reviews of your reporting obligations.

Think of this as maintenance for your compliance engine. Small updates now save you from major overhauls, and possibly fines, later.

Audit and improve your reporting program

After each major reporting cycle, ask these questions:

• What went well?

• What caused stress?

• What took too long?

Use the answers to fine-tune your process. Over time, your reporting program can become leaner, faster, and more resilient.

What are the rules that shape international compliance?

Operating across borders means complying with a patchwork of global rules. Some are legal requirements, while others are industry standards or best practices. Together, they form the foundation of international compliance.

These are the laws, regulations, and requirements every global business should monitor.

Financial reporting standards

If you’re operating internationally, your financial statements probably need to comply with:

• International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which are widely used outside the US

• Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which are required for US-based reporting

Some countries require full IFRS adoption. Others have national standards loosely based on IFRS. Either way, if you’re managing global entities, you might need to reconcile multiple frameworks or use a consolidated reporting model that works across them. Investors and regulators expect comparability, and local authorities often require statutory accounts to be filed in their preferred standards.

Data protection and privacy

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets the bar for how companies collect, store, and process personal data, and its influence extends well beyond Europe. Brazil’s General Data Protection Law, the California Consumer Privacy Act, and other laws follow similar principles. Even if you’re not headquartered in the EU, your business might be subject to the GDPR if you handle EU user data.

The GDPR (and its peers) requires:

• Transparent consent collection

• Secure storage and handling of personal data

• Processes for deleting, exporting, or updating user data on request

• Timely breach reporting

Global businesses need a privacy program that meets the strictest rules they’re subject to.

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) standards

If your business moves money or touches payments in any way, AML and KYC rules apply. Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines shape AML laws in most countries. Local regulators enforce these rules through laws such as the US Bank Secrecy Act and the EU’s AML directives.

These laws typically require:

• Verifying customer identities

• Screening against watchlists and sanctions databases

• Monitoring transactions for suspicious patterns

• Reporting flagged activity to authorities

Financial platforms like Stripe build many of these checks into their infrastructure. This makes it easier for businesses to meet these requirements without building custom systems from scratch.

Anti-bribery and -corruption laws

The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and the UK Bribery Act both apply across borders. If your business operates internationally, it’s likely subject to one or both.

These laws require:

• No bribery of foreign officials (directly or through intermediaries)

• Accurate books and records

• Internal controls to detect and prevent misconduct

These laws can apply even if the violation happens abroad, as long as your business has a US or UK nexus. That’s why many companies implement internal anti-bribery policies that go beyond what’s required locally.

Industry-specific and operating standards

Certain sectors come with their own global compliance frameworks. Examples include:

• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) for payment processing

• Basel III (capital adequacy and risk management) for banking and financial services

• Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) for pharmaceuticals

• International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 and System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 for cybersecurity, especially for software-as-a-service (SaaS) and cloud infrastructure

Even when these aren’t strictly legal requirements, customers, partners, and regulators often expect them.

Global tax and information sharing rules

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has created several frameworks that shape how businesses handle taxes and share financial data across borders, including:

• The Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project, which guides how companies report global income

• The Common Reporting Standard (CRS), which requires financial institutions to share account data with tax authorities across countries

These rules are aimed at curbing tax evasion and increasing transparency. If you hold funds or customer data across jurisdictions, you might need to report that information under rules like the CRS.

Trade and export controls

If you ship physical goods, software, or sensitive technology across borders, you’ll probably also face:

• Export control laws

• Sanctions and embargo restrictions

• Customs reporting and classification requirements

Even digital services can fall under export controls, especially if they involve encryption, AI, or defense-adjacent applications.

Most businesses don’t need to master every rule in every country. But they do need a way to identify which laws and requirements apply to them, set up internal processes accordingly, and keep pace with updates to laws. Some companies use formal governance, risk, and compliance systems for this. Others rely on external legal counsel, internal audits, and platform partners that build these standards into their infrastructure.

Stripe, for example, is PCI compliant by default and supports global KYC and AML standards and local tax reporting requirements, which helps businesses with compliance as they scale. When compliance is embedded in your tools, it’s easier to move fast without cutting corners.

How can businesses design a flexible global compliance strategy?

As your business expands, compliance complexity increases. New markets present new rules, risks, and demands. A flexible compliance strategy is a system that can scale and grow with you.

Here’s how businesses design compliance programs that are built for scale.

Start with a risk-based approach

Not every rule carries the same weight. Focus first on the areas with the greatest potential downside. Conduct a structured risk assessment, rank obligations by likelihood and impact, and prioritize controls for high-risk areas (e.g., data privacy, payments, anti-corruption).

This helps you avoid spreading resources too thin and gives leadership a comprehensive view of where to invest.

Build consistent policies that can scale

You want core policies that can apply across the company and adapt to local rules.

For example, you should build:

• A global code of conduct, with local addenda where needed

• Standardized approval workflows for expenses, vendor onboarding, or hiring

• Shared templates for contracts and disclosures

This lets you maintain quality and control without slowing down local teams.

Set up the right team structure

Compliance can’t scale if it’s owned by one person or buried in a single department. Most global companies use a hub-and-spoke model:

• A central team defines policy, manages risk, and provides oversight.

• Local compliance leads (or embedded champions) handle jurisdiction-specific execution.

Clear roles matter. So does executive buy-in. When leadership sees compliance as a growth enabler, it becomes part of how decisions get made.

Use technology to automate where it counts

Manual compliance doesn’t scale. Automating repeatable tasks frees your team to focus on higher-value, judgment-based work.

Look for ways to automate:

• Transaction monitoring and fraud detection

• Identity verification and sanctions screening

• Tax calculations and localized reporting

• Access controls and audit trails

Stripe is one example of a platform that includes these functions. Stripe handles local payment rules, generates country-specific tax reports, and flags risky transactions, all in the background. The less you have to stitch together, the more flexible your compliance function becomes.

Design for change

Your strategy must be resilient when conditions shift. That means incorporating feedback loops and flexibility.

Keep things agile by:

• Reviewing compliance risks and processes regularly

• Updating policies as new markets, products, or regulations come online

• Collecting feedback from frontline teams (especially in newer markets)

The companies that scale well are the ones that can adapt quickly, without chaos.

Make compliance part of your culture

You can’t scale compliance if only one team is responsible for it. It has to be embedded in how your company operates.

That means you should:

• Train everyone on the “why,” not just the “what”

• Give teams clear processes for when and how to raise concerns

• Hold leaders accountable for upholding compliance standards

When compliance is something employees understand and own, the entire system becomes more flexible.

The goal is to build a compliance system that’s reliable, flexible, and ready to grow with you. A few solid foundations, the right systems, and a clear structure go a long way in keeping your operations compliant while your business scales globally.

What are the challenges of managing global compliance?

Even well-resourced companies face challenges with global compliance. Some are predictable, while others take them by surprise. Here’s what makes global compliance difficult and how companies are responding.

Regulations constantly change

Rules can change constantly, especially in fast-moving areas such as data privacy, tax, and cross-border payments. Staying compliant means staying ahead of:

• Country-specific updates to filing requirements or thresholds

• New reporting obligations (e.g., ESG disclosures)

• Expanding interpretations of existing laws (e.g., GDPR enforcement)

Beyond tracking the changes themselves, the hard part is implementing them quickly across teams, systems, and policies without slowing down the business. Subscriptions to local legal alerts or regulatory update tools, proactive check-ins with regional experts, and a defined internal process for reviewing, interpreting, and rolling out changes can help.

Data is scattered across systems

Most compliance obligations rely on access to consistent, accurate data. But in many organizations, that data lives in silos—finance, legal, HR, operations—that all use different systems and formats.

This can create problems such as:

• Incomplete or inconsistent reports

• Last-minute efforts to reconcile numbers

• Visibility gaps during audits or regulatory reviews

Integration can be the fix. Businesses are investing in unified platforms or compliance-specific tooling that pulls data from across teams into a single view. Stripe, for instance, centralizes payments, taxes, and reporting across jurisdictions so teams can work from one reliable source.

Talent can get stretched

Global compliance requires specialized knowledge about local rules, cross-border risks, and regulatory nuance. But few teams have deep expertise in every market, and hiring qualified talent isn’t easy. Understaffed compliance or legal teams, burnout, and reliance on a few important people with localized knowledge can create problems.

To address this issue, some companies are combining a lean internal team with external specialists such as law firms, local advisers, and compliance-as-a-service vendors. Some are also training operations and finance leads in certain regions so compliance ownership is distributed but aligned.

Local nuance can clash with global consistency

Standardizing compliance processes saves time, but local rules don’t always align. One country might require filings in a specific format, while another might mandate an in-person regulatory meeting or filings in the local language. If your process is too centralized, local teams can get blocked by inflexible systems. If your process is too localized, oversight might be difficult.

The most effective setups enable controlled deviations—central standards that permit local modifications, with documentation and governance to track exceptions.

Documentation and audit readiness are ongoing tasks

Being compliant also means being able to demonstrate and prove your compliance procedures when asked. That involves:

• Keeping records up-to-date and accessible

• Logging approvals, changes, and sign-offs

• Maintaining evidence in case of audits or regulatory inquiries

Many companies are now automating documentation with features such as version tracking and real-time dashboards that show the status of filings or internal reviews.

Cultural and language gaps cause friction

Policies don’t always translate cleanly across borders. A whistleblower program designed in the US might not resonate in Japan. A training video filmed in London might not work in Brazil.

A failure to translate often leads to:

• Poor adoption of global policies

• Misunderstood expectations or inconsistent enforcement

• Frustration between headquarters and local teams

The fix is cultural fluency and local engagement. Translate policies, adapt training, and appoint local compliance leads who understand the global framework and regional realities.

Fraud and security risks scale as the business expands

More markets and more transactions mean more opportunities for fraud or noncompliance. Cross-border payment flows, in particular, are a frequent target for abuse, from fake invoices to sophisticated laundering attempts.

Managing this problem requires:

• Transaction monitoring

• Real-time alerts

• Sanctions screening

• Access controls and audit logging

Automation helps here too. Stripe Radar, for example, uses AI to catch risky transactions across countries, which can minimize false positives and ease the burden on compliance teams.