Cross-Border Payments for Digital Native Economies

2 Treasury and Trade Solutions The need for speed Globally there are more than 40 domestic instant payment schemes (for example, Faster Payments in the United Kingdom, or Fast and Secure Transfers in Singapore). The emergence of these domestic instant payment schemes highlights increasing consumer demand for immediate and full value payments. This demand is now overflowing into the cross-border payment space. “To help our globally expanding digital native clients tap into the phenomena of instant payments, Citi is investing in cross-border instant payments. This investment is enabling our digital native clients to unlock efficiencies that in turn help attract new suppliers, customers and investors. To complement Citi’s existing payment currency footprint of over 140 currencies and extensive cross-border ACH footprint covering over 70 corridors, we are excited to launch cross-border instant payments to the United Kingdom and Singapore, with many more countries planned for this year and next,” says Agarwal. “As our digital clients break into new markets, frictionless, fast and full value payments are critical to ensuring successful market penetration and organic growth,” says Amir Karimi, Citi’s Fintech Sales Head, Treasury and Trade Solutions. “The world of cross-border payments is still evolving but we know that across digital economies there is growing excitement to see the emergence of Citi’s cross-border instant payment capabilities. The future is truly here.” • e-commerce: Certain e-commerce industries such as ride-hailing services, providers of property rentals, or data streaming “influencer” services can often have thousands of cross-border payments a month, potentially resulting in millions of dollars of payment costs a year. Furthermore, across many e-commerce industries, the supplier, freelancer or influencer can often choose when they draw down their available balances. Being able to make cross-border payments, 24/7 instantly, with full value, strengthens the digital ecosystem and improves the end users’ experience. • Payment service providers: Through cross-border instant payments, payment service providers can enable their underlying small and medium-sized business clients to extract working capital efficiency by offering just-in-time payments. By making payments in real time, clients can increase availability of funds to use for natural hedges, short-term (overnight) investments or self-funding. “…we’ve seen a growing trend where speed is becoming more important in international payments.” — Jody Perla, Managing Director, Global Banking & Payment Infrastructure, Payoneer