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The Next Five

Money Movers: Solving The Cross-Border Payment Problem

Ep. 28

Despite an interconnected and increasingly digitalised world, a historical black cloud has been hanging over an area of finance relied upon by institutions, retail and a billion people associated with migrant work: Cross-border payments.

Domestic money transfer has seen a dramatic overhaul due to the digital revolution of recent years. But sending money internationally is a whole different ball game. Each country operates their own payment systems at varying levels of technological maturity and regulation. Due to this, historically, sending money has been both time consuming and costly, whether that is B2B, B2C or C2C.

There has been improvements over the last few years, yet the industry still has some work to do. In this episode of The Next Five, Pratik Khowala, Global Head of Transfer Solutions at Mastercard discusses how scale and collaboration can solve some of the key challenges. Emanuela Saccarola, Head of Cross-Border Payments at Citi delves into the B2B landscape, echoes the need for industry collaboration and discusses the increasingly relevant role of digital assets. Josh Gordon-Blake, EVP and GM, MGO at MoneyGram highlights the importance of remittances to the global economy and what an overhaul of the payments system can do for millions of people. 

Sources: FT resources, Deloitte, IFAD, World Bank, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, ECB, FSB, The Payments Association.

This content is paid for by Mastercard and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department.

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