Citi Launches X-Border Payment Pact With Digital Wallet Network Dandelion

Citi has integrated its cross-border payments solution with Dandelion’s digital wallet network.

The collaboration, announced Thursday (Sept. 25), lets Citi’s institutional clients use the bank’s WorldLink Payment Services to deliver “near-instant, full-value payments” into digital wallets across the world, with “near 24/7 availability.”

According to a news release, this capability will initially extend to Bangladesh, Colombia, Indonesia and the Philippines, with plans for further expansion.

The release notes that paying into wallets lets Citi enhance its offering to its financial institution clients, particularly in the remittances space, while also helping the bank’s corporate clients to make speedier and cost-effective business-to-consumer (B2C) payments.

“For corporate and public sector clients, this solution addresses a growing need for B2C payments into wallets,” the release added. “This includes everything from employee payouts, like payroll and expense reimbursements, to social benefits, customer refunds, compensation payments, and more seamless transfers to freelance and gig-economy workers.”

Dandelion was introduced by Euronet Worldwide, a global solutions and payments provider, in 2021, allowing users to connect to real-time payment rails through its network of direct-to-local connections in 200 countries.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that 42% of consumers prefer to send and receive cross-border payments using digital wallets, more than any other single payment method.

That figure comes from “Global Money Movement: How Digital Wallets Are Transforming Cross-Border Payments,” a collaboration between PYMNTS Intelligence and TerraPay.

Beyond that 42% figure, close to half of the consumers who were not using digital wallets for international transactions except that they would adopt them for peer-to-peer (P2P) payments in the near future, indicating further expansion of digital wallet usage in this domain.

“This burgeoning adoption is particularly evident in the United States, where 44% of consumers cite digital wallets as their most preferred method for cross-border payments,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.

“The report also sheds light on the coordination between senders and receivers, with 64% of digital wallet cross-border payers coordinating to use the same wallet as the recipient, highlighting the network effects driving adoption.”

But despite consumers’ embrace of digital wallets in the U.S., the same research finds less enthusiasm among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), with fewer than half of these merchants saying they use digital wallets.

“For a country where speed, security and convenience are prized by buyers and sellers, the digital wallet adoption gap that SMBs suffer represents a challenge and a missed opportunity,” PYMNTS wrote in June.

“The reasons cited by SMBs for this reluctance are pragmatic. Many cite the lack of digital wallets as an industry standard (33%) or worry over whether international partners can accept the method (27%). Security remains a persistent concern, voiced by nearly a third of non-adopting businesses.”