Sending money between countries has long been ripe for disruption due to complex and opaque operations fraught with friction and frustration for both consumers and corporates. International payments lack visibility as to when they will reach an end beneficiary, as well as the amount intermediary banks might deduct in fees. In addition, they are costly and slow, which does not satisfy today’s global e-commerce demands.
Take, for example, Booking.com, with property listings in 192 countries and territories. The travel e-commerce company must be able to make timely payments to its 28 million marketplace participants. “Booking.com is built on hundreds of millions of relatively low-value transactions. These are nuisance level international payments that are particularly poorly served by the current cross-border banking infrastructure,” says Daniel Marovitz, vice-president of global payments at Booking.com.
