Cross-border payments and remittances

Money sent home, and paid in from abroad

Take a nurse from Kochi who works in a hospital in London. Every month, she sends part of her salary to her parents in Kerala. Now take a freelance designer in Indore, who has just finished a logo for a client in the United States. The client has to pay her. Both payments cross a border.

India sees a lot of both. It receives more money from its people abroad than any other country. It also exports a great deal of services: software, design and freelance work, all paid for from overseas.

A payment that crosses a border is slow and expensive, for three reasons:

It passes through several banks on the way.
It is converted from one currency to another, and someone takes a cut on the exchange rate.
It has to follow the rules of both countries.

This Market Segment covers the companies that make such payments cheaper and faster.

Through a chain of banks, the nurse's money passes from her bank in London through other banks to her parents' bank in Kerala, is converted from pounds to rupees with a cut on the exchange rate, and must follow the rules of both countries. A transfer company, such as Wise or Remitly, makes the same transfer cheaper and faster.

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

This Market Segment has two sub-segments:

Sending money home: the transfers people make to their families

Business across borders: the payments of companies, exporters and students

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Sending money home
Business across borders

Sending money home

Consumer remittances, international money transfer, multi-currency accounts

Take the nurse in London from the start of this Market Segment. The money she sends to her parents is called a remittance. She has a choice of companies to send it through.

Wise

sells international transfers at the real exchange rate, with the fee shown up front. The real exchange rate is the rate banks use between themselves, with nothing added on top. Wise also sells a multi-currency account, which can hold and spend money in many currencies. Its Hyderabad centre is among its larger engineering bases.

Remitly

with engineers in Bengaluru, sells transfers from a phone, for people sending money to their families. India is among its largest destinations.

Western Union

with engineers in Pune, is the oldest name in the business. It began as a network of agents, local shops where a person hands over or collects cash. It now has an app too.

Aspora

formerly called Vance, sells remittances and accounts to Indians living abroad. It has engineers in Bengaluru.

Remit2Any

sells transfers from America to India.

Business across borders

Cross-border payments for education and healthcare, business-to-business (B2B) payouts, collections for exporters and freelancers, multi-currency business accounts

Now take the designer in Indore, waiting to be paid by her client in the United States. Businesses, exporters and students have the same problem as the nurse, often with larger amounts.

Flywire

with engineers in Bengaluru, has the most job postings in this Market Segment. It sells the payment that is large, rare and important. Examples are an international student's tuition fee, a foreign patient's hospital bill, and a traveller's tour. The payer pays in their own currency. At the other end, the payment is matched to the right invoice. Universities are Flywire's largest customers, and India sends more students abroad than almost any other country.

Nium

with engineers in Mumbai, was founded by an Indian entrepreneur as InstaReM. It sells a payout network. Other companies use it to send money to bank accounts and cards in over a hundred countries. Nium also issues cards for those companies.

Payoneer

with engineers in Delhi NCR, is how many of India's freelancers and small exporters get paid by marketplaces and clients abroad. The designer in Indore could collect her payment through it.

Skydo Official

a Bengaluru company, sells the same kind of collection to Indian exporters of services.

Verto

with engineers in Pune, sells multi-currency business accounts and foreign exchange. Its customers are companies that trade in African and other emerging-market currencies.

Tazapay

with engineers in Bengaluru, sells cross-border collections and payouts to businesses in Asia.

TerraPay

runs a network that moves payments between banks and mobile wallets in different countries.

Who pays whom across the border, and through which companies: the nurse sends a remittance home through a transfer company, a client abroad pays the designer in Indore through Payoneer or Skydo Official, a student pays a university through Flywire, and companies pay people in other countries through Nium or Tazapay. The numbers 1 and 2 match the two sub-segments.

The border that stops mattering.

Countries are linking their real-time payment systems to each other. India's UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is being linked to Singapore's system, to those of the Gulf countries, and to others. With such a link, a transfer moves instantly from one country's system to another's, without a chain of banks. If these links spread, much of what the companies here sell becomes a feature of the national payment systems. So these companies are betting on the harder parts: following each country's rules, handling the currencies, and matching each payment to its invoice.

Today a cross-border payment passes along a chain of banks. When India's UPI is linked to the real-time payment systems of other countries, such as Singapore and the Gulf countries, a transfer moves instantly from one system to the other, without a chain of banks.

That is how money crosses a border. The nurse in London sends her remittance through a transfer company, and the designer in Indore collects her payment from abroad, both faster and cheaper than through a chain of banks.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What payments hires for.

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