Paysend CEO: Cross-Border Payments Have Failed Consumers and SMBs

“Why should it take longer to send money anywhere than sending a WhatsApp message or text message?”

It’s a question that Ronnie Millar, co-founder and CEO at U.K.-based FinTech firm Paysend, posed as a way of highlighting the unnecessary, years-long complexity that has surrounded moving money around the world — and in today’s digital world where convenience and instant services are the order of the day, that should not be the case.

“Whatever social media platform you’re using, at the end of the day, you’re [simply] sending an electronic signal,” Millar told PYMNTS in an interview. “That’s been the case for many years, yet consumers or businesses have somehow had to put up with a [money transfer] service that doesn’t do that.”

Read more: Global FinTech Paysend Closes $125 Million Funding Deal

Putting up with that subpar service has often meant waiting several days to receive cross-border payments or losing the money altogether if it goes missing post-transaction — easy, basic things that the financial community has failed to make available and accessible to consumers globally, according to Millar.

This need has created an opportunity for the London-based international payments platform to bridge the gap. Today, the firm enables its 6.5 million retail and business customers to hold, pay and send money online to over 150 countries worldwide through a multi-currency wallet.

Active in over 60+ countries, the company, launched in 2017, also offers card-to-card transfers, linking 12 billion-plus cards globally across Visa, Mastercard, China UnionPay and local card schemes.

Millar said these partnerships have been instrumental in driving Paysend’s mission, enabling the firm to own the value chain and the payments journey with the ability to monitor and deliver the money transfer service “in one single piece.” 

Related: Paysend Launches Products to Help Customers Boost Credit

Improving financial inclusion for customers has also been one of its key focus areas over the years, with the firm recently launching two new products — Credit Builder and Pay Later — that will help customers get their credit scores on track and give them access to “a low-cost line of credit so they’re not getting themselves locked into expensive credit-related products,” he explained.

Demystifying the X-Border Money Service

With a merchant base of close to 140,000 small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), Paysend is committed to creating a one-stop shop for the SMB marketplace, Millar said, removing as many pain points as possible for these clients who can be entrepreneurs or sole traders with very little resources.

Read more: Paysend Launches Mobile Multi-Currency Wallet In Europe

Unlike more conventional structures where businesses have to find an acquirer, payment processor and open up a bank account, he said Paysend wants to make it as simple as possible for them to get all their payments needs met in one single place, whether it’s paying employees or making cross-border payments to international suppliers.

See also: Paysend, Tencent Collaborate on Cross-Border Payments

“We will open up the bank account for you as part of the onboarding experience and provide you with all the agreements that you need to take your cash payments in one single place, as well to settle payments directly into your bank account,” he added.

In addition to its direct-to-consumer (D2C) and SMB divisions, the card-to-card platform launched an enterprise division earlier this year, giving large scale enterprises access to an application programming interface (API) set to boost their operational efficiency.

Moving forward, Millar noted the shift in mentality taking place as consumers, who previously considered sending money as a lengthy, complex bank-controlled process, now embrace the digital opportunities that FinTech firms like Paysend bring to the table.

These next-generation payment platforms are helping to demystify the cross-border money transfer service and bring about change in a much more effective way.

“We’re trying to change that mentality to one that basically says, ‘Sending money is just like sending a WhatsApp message, you’re not doing anything more than that,’” he said.

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