The ongoing challenge of cross-border payments—how to move money quickly, inexpensively, widely, and transparently between people and businesses of different countries—has received another solution: PXP Financial, based in England, announced last week that it has entered a partnership with Mastercard UK and Payall to “deliver safe, compliant and efficient cross-border payments and international money transfers.”
The PXP Financial-Payall portion of the partnership began in the middle of last year, with PXP Financial looking to Payall’s solutions for compliance and safety. Payall was conceived as a bank processor that specializes in cross-border payments and country-to-country money transfers.
With Mastercard, the partnership has a way of offering people and businesses secure and convenient ways to move money between bank accounts, cards, mobile wallets, and the like, as well as access to more than 100 markets and 90% of the world’s population through Mastercard Cross-Border Services.
What They Said
In a PXP Financial blog post announcing the partnership, leaders of the three companies celebrated the arrangement.
Kamran Hedjri, CEO of PXP Financial: “By leveraging Payall’s proprietary compliance tech and Mastercard’s innovation moving funds globally, we are now able to offer our customers speedy, safe, and simple access to international payments.”
Gary Palmer, CEO of Payall: “We’re thrilled to support PXP Financial to deliver better-than-fintech service to its customers making international payments.”
Rasika Raina, Senior Vice President of Mastercard Cross-Border Services: “Whether sending money home to families or working with global suppliers, the need for fast, reliable, and transparent payments has never been more crucial.”
The B2B Case for Cross-Border Payments
A November 2022 report by Steve Murphy, Director of Commercial Payments for Javelin Strategy & Research, focused on the business-to-business (B2B) aspects of cross-border payments. The report, Cross-Border B2B Payments: Continuous Improvement Underway, looked at the innovation in that area of international payments.
The report noted that the vast preponderance of international money movement, upward of 90%, goes toward the settlement of trade transactions for goods and services between businesses. That volume has compelled companies to take on the various hurdles to easy cross-border payments—foreign exchanges, time zones, data transparency, market regulations, and messaging standards among them—that have historically led to errors in clearing transactions.
The report also highlighted pilot programs and partnerships that are aimed at real-time cross-border payments.
The Next Step
PXP Financial, in its announcement, touted the consumer benefits of the partnership: the ability of customers “to send funds to their partners, employees and suppliers safely, efficiently and more conveniently than ever. This includes inclusive pay-out options to recipients regardless of whether they are banked or unbanked.”
Next up, the announcement said, PXP Financial and Payall will work to open “new destinations and new payment channels,” including cash pickup locations and payments made directly to cards and mobile wallets.
