Research Overview

Cross-border payments and remittance transaction, even if essential, appear as a commodity for most customers; as a result, the fee structure has to be lowered to not appear as a pain point during the transaction, especially for the digital channel. Moreover, the rapid growth of mobile penetration across the world can be attributed to the growth of digital adoption in cross-border payments and remittance services. The adoption of omnichannel, mobile-first models that provide multiple touch points between customers and service providers will register high growth. Digitization improves mechanisms to reduce costs.

The proliferation of the digital platform will encourage customers to move to online transactions. Global remittance and cross-border payments’ transaction value is expected to grow from $37.15 trillion in 2020 to $39.9 trillion by 2026. All major participants are exploring the new Payment-as-a-service (PaaS) and remittance-as-a-service (white label) business model by leveraging on their in-house payment platforms. Global PaaS is expected to reach $25.5 billion by 2026 from $7.1 billion in 2020, expanding at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 23.9%.

New, emerging trends in payment technologies, such as Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) can improve the transaction cost and transfer time, and generate real-time data focused on key aspects (e.g., customer behavior). DLT can solve cross-border transaction and settlement problems by verifying the origin and authenticity of a product as it moves across the value chain. Partnerships with companies that provide Blockchain systems will be crucial to offer security services with a strong focus on transparency and data privacy. Investments in next-gen architectures will increase as companies identify important secure payments such as tokenization, and cloud-native payment platforms.