Singapore’s Tranglo Expands Cross-Border Payments Network

Tranglo has expanded its cross-border payment network to allow transfers to more than 30 digital wallets.

The Singapore-based FinTech announced the expansion Monday (April 8), noting that its direct-to-wallet transfers eliminate the need for intermediaries and ensure funds are available to recipients immediately.

“This is especially important for millions of rural recipients, who often lack access to traditional financial institutions,” the company said in a news release. “Receiving money through eWallets, which stay open 24/7, is a reliable and convenient alternative.”

And Tranglo CEO Jacky Lee said the company has seen a jump in cross-border transactions to eWallets, with some corridors, such as GCC to Pakistan, experiencing a surge of close to 400% in transactions.

“It’s all about helping businesses create more value,” Lee said. “For example, one of our biggest partners in the UAE saw an 8-fold increase in transactions to Pakistan and Indonesia after adding our eWallet payout service. The growth opportunity presented by eWallet cannot be overstated.”

The company says its direct-to-wallet transfers are available in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam, with more countries to follow. Tranglo says its cross-border payments solution Tranglo Connect integrates payout and partner services with direct API connectivity and lets companies make payments to more than 80 countries.

In related news, PYMNTS wrote last week about cross-border payments through the lens of interoperability — the concept of being able to pay anyone and anywhere regardless of the network, noting that it “remains a Holy Grail in payments.”

This followed the announcement that PayPal and Venmo began offering Visa’s peer-to-peer (P2P) payment system, Visa+. The news built on an earlier report that Astra, Brightwell, Cross River Bank and Fiserv were going to implement Visa+ APIs for their digital wallet and merchant clients by this fall.

“Users who sign up for a Visa+ personalized payment address, or payname, link that designation to their P2P accounts (without sharing mobile phone numbers or email addresses), thus enabling cross-platform fund flows,” PYMNTS wrote. “Visa+ also will use Visa Direct for real-time disbursements, which speeds up B2C payments.”

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that just 23% of smaller businesses say that current cross-border payment solutions are “very or extremely satisfactory,” while 38% percent of smaller businesses saw an increase in cross-border payments sent or received as recently as 2021.