Welcome to the second edition of our new blog series exploring Currencycloud products you might not know about.
Historically international payments haven’t been easy. If you’ve ever sent an international payment via your bank you’ve probably experienced delays, restricted access, and limited visibility. We know that three key pillars to an effortless payment experience are improving speed, accessibility and transparency. As client and user demand grows we know these are all becoming increasingly important. It’s why we’re sharing more about our journey towards a truly frictionless payment experience with you.
Why speed is important for people, and for businesses
In 2021 $150 trillion was sent internationally. Our payments team estimates that if the average international payment takes a day to arrive, that means at any given time there’s $400 billion stuck in the pipes of the global payment system - the equivalent of the GDP of Norway in limbo. That’s a lot of money, but behind this are people and companies who are waiting to access these funds. Families waiting for payments to land to cover things like medical bills, workers in the gig economy waiting to get paid, or a shipment of supplies stuck in port until a payment is received. Supporting family, getting paid, and moving goods are all reasons that make speed critical. This is why we’re on a journey to delivering truly frictionless payments across our network.
Did you know…?
There are 56 instant payment schemes and counting around the world right now encompassing countries that represent approximately 85% of the world’s GDP
Why accessibility is important for people, and for businesses
Putting a limit on when people can send money, for example mornings-only, is a huge inconvenience for people and businesses alike. If someone wants to make a payment to their friend while on holidays to cover the cost of an evening meal, they may be disappointed to find that the money might not arrive until the following morning. Payment cut-off times can restrict your business’ ability to give your customers a fantastic service. Not only do cut-offs limit when your customers can use your service, but they impact your flexibility as a business. You have to factor in cut-offs into your customer experience, especially across different time zones, and this has a knock on effect of you not getting your business processes done to your preferred time scale.
Why transparency is important for people, and for businesses
Transparency is all-important for people when they receive money: for example, a friend or family member’s name is matched to the payment, not a company name they don’t recognize. As a business you know it’s not ideal that beneficiaries see an intermediary used for handling your payments. It can be confusing and unsettling for them. It can also make reconciling invoices a pain for you as payments don’t match against the expected payer’s name.
What we’re doing to get there
Currencycloud is focused on working towards making 24/7 payments, 365 days a year a reality. Our goal is to offer a frictionless international payments experience - so that means instant 24/7/365 across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the Asia Pacific region and North America. Your customers will benefit from speed, accessibility and transparency embedded in every payment.
We’re working towards this goal by introducing the following:
Making payments so much faster
People and businesses looking to send money to India, Malaysia and The Philippines will now have their funds land in minutes, similar to our GBP and EUR payment routes, instead of the current time of landing in an hour when using our local INR, MYR, and PHP payment routes. This is great for beneficiaries who no longer have to wait an hour to access their money - it’s there in minutes.
Making payments more accessible
Making payments 24/5 Monday - Friday is now a reality via one of our major payment routes. GBP is our flagship route, with clients using us to make payments faster and more accessible for their customers.
Currently, if you make a local Euro payment after 2pm UK time the payment won’t arrive until the next day. But we want making payments to be as convenient as possible, so we’ll be giving you the ability to send local EUR payments instantly 24/5 by the end of the year.
making payments more transparent
Now payers and their payees can have the reassurance of who a payment has come from, as the payer’s name is displayed instead of Currencycloud's name when making payments via our local GBP and local EUR payment routes.
And we’re not stopping there…
"At Currencycloud we’re on a journey of speeding things up to make sure payments reach your beneficiaries within minutes. We’re also moving towards 24/7 payment processing so that you can make your payment whenever you want. And we’ve made things more transparent by displaying the name of the sender on some of our major local routes. This is just the beginning and we have lots more exciting features planned on our roadmap in the coming months!"
Sofia Cormack, Senior Product Manager
We look forward to having you on our journey
We’re continuing to improve speed, accessibility and transparency for our clients wherever they are in the world. Our goal is to allow clients and their users to make instant payments 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.
Each of our payment services is designed to back your bold. Find out more about how you can use them to offer an exceptional service that keeps you ahead of the competition. Get in touch with an expert and start your journey today.
