Visa The Embedded Lending Opportunity April 2024 Banner

Payhawk Partners With Wise Platform to Streamline Global Payments

international payments

Global spend management solution Payhawk has partnered with global payment infrastructure firm Wise Platform to provide faster and more cost-effective global payments to its international customer base.

This collaboration solidifies Payhawk’s position as a one-stop shop for spend management, offering a single platform to manage all card, reimbursement and bill payments, the company said in a Tuesday (Oct. 24) blog post.

The new International Payments feature, developed in partnership with Wise Platform, allows Payhawk customers to make transfers in over 50 currencies across more than 160 countries directly from the platform, according to the post.

Previously, businesses had limited options for managing international payments, relying on transfer services or banks offering solutions that often had slow transfer times, high costs and opaque fees, the post said.

With the integration of Wise Platform into Payhawk, customers can now leverage benefits directly from the Payhawk platform, making it easier to pay suppliers with a single click, regardless of currency or location, per the post. This integration enhances Payhawk’s end-to-end accounts payable (AP) solution, which includes approval workflows, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered data extraction and native integrations with accounting software to automate manual processes.

“As a result of our new feature, our customers can now effortlessly manage and pay all global payments within a single platform, creating greater efficiency and control over their global spending,” Payhawk CEO and Co-founder Hristo Borisov said in the release.

Steve Naudé, managing director of Wise Platform, added, “In today’s global economy, there is a growing need for businesses to make international payments in multiple currencies to multiple locations quickly and at a low cost.”

Cross-border transactions have traditionally had the highest frictions and costs of any form of payment, PYMNTS reported in September. Solving for these historical bottlenecks has drawn the attention of non-bank platforms and firms offering alternative payment methods, as well as an increasing interest from incumbent financial institutions.

Despite these challenges, cross-border business is on the rise among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), PYMNTS Intelligence has found. At the same time, 27% of SMBs see the complexity of cross-border payments as a hindrance to their ability to grow, according to “International B2B Payments: A Guide For Entrepreneurs and Digital Businesses,” a PYMNTS and Payoneer collaboration.