Payments

As remote talent surges globally, legacy banking is giving way to instant, borderless payouts.

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

The World Bank estimates that there are between 154 million and 435 million gig workers worldwide, a workforce that is helping reshape the estimated $191 trillion cross-border payments market.

Financial institutions are looking to tap into the gig economy’s high-volume, low-value cross-border payments for freelancer payments, remittances, and small-business transactions. The market is projected to grow nearly threefold, from $674.1 billion to between $2.18 trillion and $2.52 trillion, over the next 8 to 9 years.

J.P. Morgan Payments recently expanded the cross-border payment capabilities of its Xpedite Remit offering by integrating Thunes’ Direct Global Network, enabling clients to make payments in more than 100 currencies via instant payment rails to accounts and, in some cases, to digital wallets.

“If you’re paying an individual in China, they probably want to receive it in their wallet rather than in their account,” Gayathri Vasudev, global head of high-value payments & FX at J.P. Morgan Payments, told Global Finance.

Cross-Border Payments Speed Up

Whether it’s Brazil’s PIX, India’s Unified Payment Interface, or the EU’s SEPA Instant Credit Transfer, the domestic instant payment rails have set a high bar for cross-border payment rails.

“Customers and businesses now expect domestic payments to be instant, transparent, and available 24/7,” said Albion Murati, a senior partner at McKinsey & Co., who moderated a panel on the topic at the recent Sibos conference in Miami. “Cross-border transfers, by contrast, do not always deliver the same experience.”

“In most jurisdictions now, the progress that retail and wholesale domestic payments have made in terms of having that great customer experience is there for all to see,” added panelist Simon Eacott, head of payments at NatWest. “And whilst cross-border, we have made a lot of progress over the years, it’s still lagging a little bit in many areas.”

However, the speed of cross-border transactions has improved dramatically, according to Swift performance data. For inward transactions, the average time for ANZ is about 90 seconds, said fellow panelist Lisa Vasic, managing director of transaction banking at ANZ.

Corporate treasuries could pay employee salaries in emerging markets, for example, $1,000 to $4,000, directly to an employee’s mobile money account or digital wallet, said Peter De Caluwe, co-founder and CEO of Thunes. “If it’s a corporate that is ordering 50 tons of chemicals for $2 million, it won’t be paid into a wallet. That is something that needs to be transacted with correspondent banks because there is trade financing involved.”

“Speed is not the issue that it once was,” said Vasic. “Similarly, on an outbound transaction in certain corridors, we are getting payments there in 40 seconds.”

Speed is important, but not as important as principle protection for low-value cross-border flows, added J.P. Morgan Payments’ Vasudev, who was also on the panel.

“It means no deductions,” she said. “What you send is what the beneficiary gets.”

For multinational employers, these advances should improve the cross-border contractor experience and reduce payment inquiries. Adoption, however, hinges on greater transparency and availability.

Rob Daly covers fintech and economics. Contact him at rdaly@gfmag.com.

Fast-track settlement is making East African payments easier—and a new strategy emerges.

This article appears in the October 2026 issue of Global Finance Magazine.

East Africa is beginning to transform the national payment systems used by millions of businesses and consumers into infrastructure for a more integrated regional market. Rather than building an entirely new platform, the emerging strategy is to connect existing systems, enabling money to move between countries more quickly and with less friction.

Rwanda and Tanzania are at the forefront of that effort, working to connect Tanzania’s Instant Payment System (TIPS) with Rwanda’s National Payment Switch (RSwitch) to create an instant-payment corridor under the Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan of the East African Community (EAC).

The work is moving beyond policy discussions into the technical, operational, and regulatory arrangements required to make the system function. Its significance, however, extends beyond faster remittances. If national payment systems become interoperable, businesses could pay suppliers, receive payments from customers, and settle commercial transactions across borders more easily than under traditional arrangements.

Small and midsize enterprises, banks, fintech companies, and mobile-money operators could all benefit if regional payments begin to match the speed and convenience of domestic transactions.

This Rwanda-Tanzania initiative offers the most immediate test of the concept, but it is not the only example of East Africa’s emerging payments architecture. Kenya’s Pesalink, the country’s instant-payment network, connected to the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) in February. The partnership enables instant, round-the-clock payments from PAPSS participants to banks and mobile-money operators on the Pesalink network in Kenya, with transactions settled in local currencies.

Those two developments illustrate different routes toward the same objective. Rwanda and Tanzania are connecting their national instant payment systems directly, while Kenya is linking its domestic infrastructure to a wider continental network. Together, they suggest that African payments integration may depend less on building a single system than on making existing systems work together.

EAC’s Regional Masterplan

A broader regional effort is also moving into implementation. On August 24, the EAC announced the establishment of three technical working groups to support implementation of its Masterplan. The Masterplan is “anchored on four key pillars”: governance and regulation, infrastructure, inclusivity, and capacity building. It includes 20 strategic initiatives to strengthen cross-border payment systems.

Total trade for members of the EAC in 2025 is reported at $156.6 billion, including $19.3 billion among partner states, underscoring the system’s commercial implications. As goods and services move more freely across the region, the financial infrastructure supporting those transactions will also need to become easier to use.

“East Africa’s push for interoperable payments could fundamentally change the economics of regional trade,” said Robert Omotunde, executive director and chief investment officer of Lagos-based asset management and advisory firm MDU Capital. “The significance goes beyond making cross-border transactions faster or cheaper; it is about creating the financial infrastructure through which African businesses can trade more seamlessly across borders.”

As the African Continental Free Trade Area expands markets for cross-border businesses and increases demand for payment systems that support that commerce, opportunities could eventually extend beyond the EAC. Faster settlement, lower transaction costs, and greater use of local currencies could reduce some of the financial friction that still accompanies regional trade. While East Africa is beginning to connect payment systems already embedded in its banks, mobile-money networks, and the wider financial system, the region faces the challenge of ensuring those connections operate reliably across different regulatory and monetary environments.

Vincent Nwanma is a contributing writer based in Nigeria.