If you are a FinTech company building an international money transfer, payment solution or remittance platform, an integral part of it would be a cross-border money transfer processor. The only other alternative is creating your own banking network by forging relationships with traditional banks which is lengthy and requires a huge effort. By integrating with a payment processor, a FinTech company significantly reduces this complexity and is able to get to market much quicker, while reducing operational risk and overhead.

International money transfer processor is a mediator between the sending and receiving parts of the transaction which are situated in different countries. It handles transfers and also mitigates fraud and chargebacks. Moreover, your services and, not surprisingly, customer satisfaction will heavily depend on such a partnership.

At Velmie, we’ve been helping FinTechs to build international money transfer apps for different regions and got an extensive knowledge of b2b vendors to share. The overview below is aimed to help FinTech companies with choosing the right vendor for their business model.

Moving forward, do you know what your ideal partner should be like? There are several criteria to look at, which are listed below.

• Fees transparency and competitive rates.
• An extensive list of currencies and regions covered.
• Payment methods that are relevant to your audience.
• Strong fraud and compliance measures.
• Open API and ease of integration.

Further, we summarized 4 most promising and relevant cross-border money transfer service providers: Currencycloud, Rapyd, Banking Circle, Nium.

1. Currencycloud

• Website: https://www.currencycloud.com/
• Currencies: 38 (as of July, 2021)
• Countries: 180 (as of July, 2021)
• Trusted by: Revolut, Sezzle, Transwap, TransferGo, PENTA, MoneyMover, Starling Bank, PicoPay.
• Countries where Currencycloud holds licenses: UK, NL, USA, Canada. [Details]
• Compliance: ISO/IEC 27001:2013, DPA, GDPR, PCI-DSS Level 1, ISO 27018 Personal Data Protection, SSAE16/SOC 1, SOC2 and SOC 3, FIPS United States Government Security Standards. More details on security: https://www.currencycloud.com/legal/security/.
• API: https://www.currencycloud.com/product/api/
• Unique selling point: Focused strongly on serving businesses in the banking and FinTech industry (banks, FinTechs, FX brokers).
• Best For: Currencycloud is the best choice for FinTech startups, SMEs and enterprises in the Financial industry thanks to its approach to serve financial institutions and companies first and best possible.

Currencycloud is a cloud-based cross-border payment and FX processing platform for FinTechs and financial institutions. It enables payments from 180 countries and its product, Currencycloud Spark, provides multi-currency accounts to collect, store, convert and pay in 38 currencies (as of 2021). CC provides real-time FX rates that are close to the mid-market rate, thus, offering the infrastructure and terms to empower its clients with highly competitive solutions. Moreover, finding a white-label money transfer platform that provides integration with CC will help you noticeably reduce costs and time-to-market.

2. Rapyd

• Website: https://www.rapyd.net/
• Currencies: 65+ (as of July, 2021)
• Countries: 103 (as of July, 2021)
• Trusted by: Paysafe, Uber, IKEA, Hotmart, Cornershop.
• Countries where Rapyd holds licenses: UK, EU, USA, Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia. In the rest of the world, Rapyd provides regulated Services through select Network Partners. [Details]
• Compliance and security: built-in AML, CTF, sanctions screening, tokenization and encryption, and KYC and KYB identity verification, making it easy to offer local payment methods, securely, anywhere you do business. [Details]
• Transfer / Payment types: 900 alternative payment methods ranging from cash, e-wallets, local card networks, etc.
• Fees, Markup: See services agreement.
• API: https://docs.rapyd.net/build-with-rapyd/docs/rapyd-collect-overview-1
• Unique selling point: 900+ payments types and diversity (of use cases, supporting diverse approaches to payments in different locations, etc.).
• Best For: Large-scale enterprises, ecommerce companies and marketplaces, SME that need a wide variety of payment types available globally.

Rapyd is a FinTech-as-a-Service platform that provides APIs to help integrate local payments and FinTech capabilities. Its Global Payments Network connects clients to all the ways the world likes to pay and the infrastructure to create FinTech solutions, like ewallets, cards and financial services. Rapyd core products include:

• Collect — local and international payment acceptance and checkout (customizable hosted checkout page, checkout toolkit, integrations via REST API and SDK);
• Disburse — local and cross-border disbursements;
• Wallet — digital payments, financial services and cash withdrawals with white-label ewallet;
• Issuing — local card issuing in 20+ countries.

3. Banking Circle

• Website: https://www.bankingcircle.com/
• Currencies: 25 currencies (as of July, 2021)
• Clients: Stripe, Nuvei, Paysafe, Novalnet, PPRO, Alibaba, Shopify.
• Legal: Banking Circle is a credit institution, since February 2020.
• API: https://docs.bankingcircleconnect.com/discover-api-offerings
• Unique selling point: Banking license, low-cost and secure infrastructure.
• Best For: Payments businesses, large corporates, banks and FinTechs willing to implement a ready-made infrastructure from a provider with a banking license.

Banking Circle is a fully licensed bank aiming to deliver financial infrastructure at low cost, compliantly and securely. Providing direct access to clearing in multiple countries, the company makes payments cross-border faster and more cost-effective.

Banking Circle provides:

• Access to a global account infrastructure to perform local payments and establish local accounts worldwide;
• A multi-currency, multi-jurisdictional banking solution that negates the need to have several banking relationships;
• Foreign exchange (FX) solutions;
• Access to business lending solutions;
• Access to global and local clearing methods (SEPA, CHAPS, SWIFT, etc.).

4. Nium (Formerly InstaReM)

• Website: https://www.nium.com/
• Currencies: 63 (as of July, 2021)
• Countries: 100+ (as of July, 2021)
• Trusted by: Accendo Banco, BeeTech, BSM, Deel, Ebury, Frente, HomeSend, Rimuut, Singtel, Travelex, Volopay.
• Countries where Nium holds licenses: UK, EU, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia. [Details]
• Transfer types/Payment types: Bank ACH, bank wire transfer, payout to cards, cash pickup, ewallets.
• API: https://docs.nium.com/nium-developer-hub
• Unique selling point: Geographical and payment service breadth, access to restricted Asian currencies within a single integration.
• Best for: Banks, invoice & credit management, SMEs and FinTech startups that are looking for broad geographical coverage.

Nium helps companies manage global payments through their embedded finance platform which is designed to integrate with its customers’ business needs and technology seamlessly. The platform connects businesses to the world’s payment infrastructure through one API. Their modular platform for Pay In, Pay Out and Card-Issuance allows banks, payment providers, travel companies and other businesses to collect and disburse funds in local currencies to over 100 countries, plus issue physical and virtual cards to 40+ countries across the globe.

Conclusion

To sum up, choosing an international money transfer processor as a partner for your FinTech company vastly depends on your specific requirements. However, we would recommend considering Currencycloud and Nium for FinTechs as the top choice as they are specifically focused on these type of clients.