The findings reveal that despite a majority reporting confidence in their firm’s cross-border payment capabilities, decision-makers face difficulties including lost business from a failure to integrate with popular and emergent payment methods. By 2026, 60% of the world’s population is expected to use digital wallets for daily payment needs. But despite their growing popularity, they are ranked as the most problematic endpoint for cross-border payments. And while 97% of respondents believe their systems today are ‘completely’ or ‘mostly compatible’ with how international recipients receive funds, nearly 40% reported losing business due to cross-border payment issues. Chloé Mayenobe, President and Chief Operating Officer at Thunes, said, “The research paints a very mixed picture. Payment leaders are confident in their capabilities but face significant integration challenges particularly with digital wallets. At Thunes, we solve this critical gap on the immediate horizon by directly integrating with 3 billion digital wallets worldwide. Electronic wallets are becoming increasingly important, providing bank-like services and financially including those who are unbanked and underbanked. As commerce digitizes further, payment interoperability will become vital.”

Ed Chandler, Head of Money Movement, Europe at Visa, commented, “To meet the needs of individuals and businesses of all sizes to move money domestically and internationally easily and securely, payment interoperability remains a major challenge beyond traditional methods. We have a goal to enable money movement from any endpoint to any other endpoint, and rather than build an entirely new money movement system from scratch, we can use Visa’s scale and work with partners like Thunes to be a single connection point in a fast-evolving ecosystem.”

The survey, which included 233 European payment leaders from financial institutions, banks, fintechs, SaaS, money transfer operators and payment service providers in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain, explored the state of cross-border payment systems and their interoperability. Payment system interoperability refers to the seamless communication, information exchange, and value transfer between different payment systems.

Visa, Thunes and The Paypers recently released a whitepaper, The Road Ahead: Seamless Payment Interoperability on the important role of payment interoperability in the digital economy.

Key Findings:

Confidence vs. Reality: While 97% of respondents believe their systems are ‘completely’ or mostly ‘compatible’ with how international recipients receive funds, nearly 40% reported losing business due to cross-border payment issues. Clear Differences: Respondents cited major differences in the ease of issuing payments to different endpoints. Bank accounts were ranked as the easiest method to facilitate payments, followed by global cards (Visa), e-Wallets (like PayPal), cash and local card schemes. Digital Wallets: Despite their growing popularity, they are ranked as the most problematic endpoint for cross-border payments, with only 8% of respondents describing them as the easiest to integrate. By 2026, 60% of the world’s population is expected to use digital wallets for daily payment needs. Barriers to Integration: Security concerns, payment tracking and processing speed were identified as the top challenges to integrate different payment systems. Future Innovations: Respondents expect AI to play a critical role in improving payment processes, fraud detection, risk management and customer support. Blockchain technology and digital currencies are also seen as promising to facilitate secure, rapid and low-cost transactions.

The survey of 233 European payment leaders was conducted by Savanta from 8-16 May 2024, the referenced survey included decision-makers responsible for their firms’ payment systems and handling daily cross-border payments, with most respondents reporting an average transaction value of €75k.