Finance Desk

At Sibos 2026, Bank of America announced that it had executed its first real-time payment initiated by Bradesco.

Bank of America Corp. has completed its first pilot transaction for a new cross-border real-time payments service, partnering with São Paulo–based Banco Bradesco SA to execute the transfer.

The bank announced the milestone during the annual Sibos conference in Miami on Tuesday. The payment, initiated by Bradesco through its existing connection to Swift, arrived in Hong Kong dollars in a local beneficiary’s account via Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System.

Bradesco did not respond to Global Finance’s request for comment. The transaction’s exact processing time or cost remains undisclosed. However, Bank of America confirmed that the payment was similar to a domestic instant transfer and was completed in near real time.

Need for Speed

Traditional banks are facing stiffer competition from card networks like Visa and fintechs such as Wise, which says 74% of its transfers arrive in under 20 seconds.

There are also stablecoin providers such as Circle, which all promise faster cross-border payments.

Daniel Stanton, Payments Product Head in Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America, is betting that the firm can win on ease of adoption rather than speed alone.

“The solution is designed to work with existing banking infrastructure,” said Stanton in an email. “[The bank’s] clients can gain the benefits of faster cross-border payments without a significant technology build, new connectivity or changes to their existing accounting processes,” he added.

Expanding Global Reach

Bank of America announced the service in June. It is designed for corporate, commercial, and financial-institution clients that send large volumes of small payments, such as remittances, payouts to gig workers, and payments to e-commerce vendors.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank said the service offers real-time tracking, delivers the full principal amount and gives senders certainty that payments will arrive. It also connects to domestic instant-payment networks, including Mexico’s SPEI, the U.K.’s Faster Payments Service and India’s UPI. Clients can connect through their existing APIs or host-to-host channels.

Stanton said Bank of America clients will later be able to start these payments through CashPro, its digital banking platform, beginning in 2027. “We will share additional timing details closer to launch,” he added.

Bank of America first introduced CashPro to corporate and institutional clients in 2009.

“We view this as complementary to our correspondent banking business,” Stanton continued. “It expands the payment options available to financial institutions and helps us meet growing demand for faster, more transparent cross-border payments.”

As for how many payments the firm expects to handle in its first year, it is too early to tell.

“We are seeing strong interest in solutions that can improve cross-border payments without requiring clients to make significant technology investments, establish new connectivity or change their accounting processes,” he said.

Surging Demand for Seamless Payouts

In June, Bank of America cited projections that cross-border person-to-person payment flows could grow 58% by 2032. Business-to-consumer flows could grow 131% by then.

Mark Monaco, head of Global Payments Solutions at Bank of America, touted the firm’s cross-border services earlier this month.

“Corporate treasurers don’t want to manage a patchwork of domestic schemes market by market,” Monaco told Global Finance. “They need banking partners to absorb that complexity.”

Industry Milestones in Miami

Announcements like these have made Sibos the default stage for major cross-border banking breakthroughs. For example, at last year’s event in Frankfurt, Germany, Swift unveiled a shared blockchain-based ledger. Over 30 global institutions backed the initiative—a move aimed at making 24/7 cross-border payments faster and less expensive worldwide.

Swift named Bank of America as one of the 30 firms involved.

Check out an overview of Sibos 2026 in Miami.

Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com

Revolut US CEO Cetin Duransoy reveals plans to target globally minded and “underbanked” Americans as it builds toward becoming a primary bank.

After receiving conditional approval from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national bank charter, Revolut Technologies Inc. appears ready to launch a full-scale challenge to traditional banks and fintechs in the United States.

After relatively quick growth in France, Spain, and Italy, Revolut aims to bring its superapp model to the U.S., where it doesn’t exist in quite the same form.

Revolut’s U.S. CEO, Cetin Duransoy, who has held senior roles at Raisin, Fundbox, Visa, and Capital One, spoke with Global Finance about Revolut’s plans for the American market. 

Global Finance: In the US, banks, fintechs, brokerages, travel products and payment apps are mostly separate. Does that surprise you? Do you see a genuine hole in the U.S. market for a company that combines all those relationships in one place?

Duransoy: It’s not surprising, given how complex these products are and how crowded and fragmented the U.S. market is. Layer on the regulatory process, and combining all these product suites—banking, brokerage, FX, crypto, travel, and more—into a single company or app becomes genuinely difficult and, for most companies, not worth the effort.

We believe you need a genuinely differentiated product to succeed in this market, and we have identified an opportunity here. By bringing all these products into one platform, we can remove the friction customers typically experience when cobbling together services from multiple providers.

GF: People often say, “The U.S. banking market is different.” Different how, exactly? And how might those differences affect Revolut?

Duransoy: The US’s fragmented, charter-based regulation can be more cumbersome than the EU’s passporting model, and U.S. customers tend to rely more on credit than their European counterparts. But the U.S. provides certain advantages, including the U.S. card network and interchange system, which subsidize rewards; FDIC insurance; and consumer-protection laws, which create a trust threshold.

Our broad product offering, 80-million-user global network, and strong global brand allow U.S. to cater to the distinct challenges of the U.S. market and understand the challenges of U.S. distribution costs. By obtaining a national bank charter, we will be on par with traditional banks, with direct Fedwire/ACH access and lending capability.

GF: When Revolut enters the U.S. market more aggressively, should Americans expect something close to the European Revolut experience—or will the U.S. product necessarily look much more like a traditional American bank competing on deposits, credit cards and lending?

Duransoy: We are always focused on product-market fit for our customers, and the U.S. will be no different. We’ve publicly shared that we will bring the best of what Revolut offers and provide the products U.S. customers want most, including checking accounts, credit cards, installment loans, FX, and stablecoins. We’ll continue innovating to deliver a distinct, more productive experience for U.S. customers.

GF: One of the things that makes Revolut unusual in Europe is that it sits at the intersection of finance, travel and lifestyle. Is that model central to how you think about the US, or is America more of a banking opportunity?

Duransoy: Yes. Combining our lifestyle products with the financial services that have made Revolut so popular remains central to our thinking. And they’re a key differentiator in many of our markets. We expect these offerings to help make us a top-of-wallet card and strengthen customer retention.

GF: Why should someone with Chase, Amex, Venmo, Robinhood, and a good travel card move meaningful parts of their financial life to Revolut? What can you offer that those companies, individually or collectively, do not?

Duransoy: We recognize that inertia is a strong force when it comes to financial services and that a customer’s bank holds critical parts of their financial life, such as their mortgage or direct deposit.

What we offer is the ability to consolidate multiple products and services into a single interface and remove the friction our customers find frustrating with other services. Revolut’s broad-based platform allows customers to seamlessly access multi-currency spending without foreign transaction fees, instant global P2P, a combined debit/credit product, budgeting, digital assets, and investing, all without transferring funds between platforms or managing multiple accounts. That’s especially valuable for people who travel internationally, have cross-border family ties, or are underserved by traditional credit underwriting.

GF: Which types of lending will Revolut prioritize in the US?

Duransoy: We intend to initially prioritize unsecured and secured credit cards and installment loans.

GF: What does Revolut understand about the consumer relationship that you think many American banks and fintechs still lack?

Duransoy: We treat our global app as the product. We iterate quickly, aim for gamified engagement, and offer frequent feature releases, in contrast to most U.S. bank apps, which have slower release cycles.

We also build for financial lives that span borders and currencies, rather than assuming a single-currency, single-country customer. American banks were largely built for a domestic customer, and that assumption is increasingly out of step with a more mobile, globally connected population.

GF: Do you think Revolut is underestimated in the US? If so, why? Among those who are aware, what do people in the U.S. most commonly misunderstand about Revolut right now?

Duransoy: “Underestimated” is probably right now, largely because our independent U.S. bank doesn’t exist yet. So we’re still seen as a “European neobank” by most Americans. That undersells what we’ll be once we have a full national charter, FDIC insurance, and our full lending capabilities live.

The most common misunderstanding among those who do know the brand is that we’re simply a fintech or a travel debit card, rather than a company with an 80-million-user global base—including 1.4M in the US—and banking licenses now spanning the UK, France, Australia, Mexico, and more.

GF: Are you coming to the U.S. to compete for a small slice of the market, or do you ultimately believe Revolut can change what Americans expect from a bank?

Duransoy: In the US, our near-term goal is to compete for market share. No new entrant can reshape what an entire country expects from a bank on day one. That takes years of trust-building, especially post-charter, when FDIC insurance and regulatory scrutiny are new territory for us.

What we’re looking to do is win the demographics best suited to us, namely the internationally minded, underbanked-by-incumbents, and digitally native users.

GF: On the corporate side, what are Revolut’s corporate banking plans?

Duransoy: Revolut Business exists—and is a core focus for us—in the U.S. We expect this to continue and are excited to launch merchant acquiring within the first years of becoming a bank.

GF: If we revisit this in three years, what would need to be true for you to say that Revolut has successfully become a major U.S. bank?

Duransoy: Within three years, we expect to be a fully operating bank with real momentum. We won’t share specific customer or product numbers today, but we’re building for scale and a sizable U.S. customer base that treats us as their primary bank, not a secondary account. That’s the bar we’re setting for ourselves.

A record fine on the Swiss bank highlights U.S. regulators shifting focus to fill anti-money laundering gaps.

This article appears in the October issue of Global Finance Magazine.

A record $125 million fine handed out to UBS by U.S. regulators in August could herald increased scrutiny of banks.

How banks react to stricter compliance with anti-money laundering laws will be key as U.S. foreign policy and enforcement go together.

“As sanctions and tariffs continue to define U.S. foreign policy, this trend will likely continue. The U.S. and European banks are intertwined the most with the global economy, so the probability of them being under increased scrutiny is likely,” said Salar Ghahramani, associate professor of business law and international law & policy at Penn State Abington.

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) settlement resolves allegations made by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Johann Scholtz, senior equity analyst for Morningstar, suggests that the fine is a result of the market that the Swiss bank targets. 

“These banks are particularly exposed to the risk of fines and regulatory intervention just by virtue of their business model. Banking, politically connected individuals, banking high-net-worth people, I think it exposes them to particular risk from an anti-money laundering perspective,” Scholtz said.

The fines were for not sufficiently monitoring 61,500 foreign exchange transactions and not flagging suspicious activity. The record amount is partly because UBS Group AG was fined $14.5 million in 2018 for similar activities with regulators discovering that remedial action had not been taken. 

“The 2018 fine may have convinced the UBS board that they were standing on very shaky PR and legal grounds due to the previous track record, likely propelling them to agree to the terms of the fine,” added Ghahramani.

Outcome-Focused Compliance

Although there is no current political push to modify AML laws, the UBS judgement may constitute shifting priorities by U.S. regulators.

 “The direction of AML regulations in the U.S. seems that it’s becoming more outcome-focused and less of a tick-box exercise. They really want banks to prove that they have a robust system in place rather than just ticking boxes,” Scholtz said.

How can banks protect themselves? By updating their risk management systems to ensure compliance through internal audits. The technical description of UBS’ settlement was unduly specific. Blaming an error in AML surveillance data feeds, a lack of verification of account holder addresses, no reliable unique identifier to match transactions, an absence of any exception queue and errors in the Excel spreadsheet used for foreign exchange transfers

“The announcement brings closure to this legacy matter. UBS has cooperated fully with its regulators and has made significant investments to remediate and strengthen its AML program in line with leading industry practices,” A UBS spokesperson said. 

Nic Wirtz is a contributing writer based in Guatemala.