The cross-border payments market, including payouts, was valued at $212.5 billion in 2024, with a 7.1% annual growth. But moving money across borders still has challenges. To execute international payouts successfully, you’ll need to consider multiple factors, such as different currencies, shifting regulations, inconsistent payment networks, and global risks.

Below, we’ll cover how businesses execute high-volume global disbursements, which networks enable real-time or near-real-time payments, and where problems occur.

What’s in this article?

• What are cross-border payouts?
  
• How do businesses execute high-volume global disbursements?
  
• What networks and intermediaries enable real-time payouts?
  
• What are the benefits of automated payout systems?
  
• What compliance and foreign exchange (FX) risks complicate global payouts?
  
• How can businesses design efficient and compliant cross-border payout strategies?
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What are cross-border payouts?

Cross-border payouts are payments sent from a business in one country to someone in another. The money usually deposits in the recipient’s local bank account, card, or digital wallet in their local currency.

What makes these payouts difficult is what happens between “send” and “receive.” A payout that starts in US dollars might need to convert to euros, British pounds, or Indian rupees and move through multiple financial institutions.

How do businesses execute high-volume global disbursements?

Running thousands of payouts across multiple countries and currencies requires infrastructure that can scale and keep up with changing regulations.

Companies generally use one of two approaches:

• Global payouts platform: Instead of building direct connections to banks in every country, handling dozens of payout file formats, or managing currency conversions on your own, businesses integrate with a single payments provider, such as Stripe. What could take months per country can often be accomplished quickly through one integration.

• In-house payout stack: Some larger companies maintain their own payout networks by opening accounts in multiple countries and connecting directly to local systems (e.g., ACH in the US, SEPA in Europe, Faster Payments in the UK). While this offers more control over treasury operations and FX flows, it can create a growing technical and regulatory burden. Every new country means new banking relationships, new data formats, and new compliance obligations.

Regardless of the model, automation is important. This includes batch processing for high transaction volumes, application programming interfaces (APIs) for triggering payouts, and automated reconciliation to close books quickly.

What networks and intermediaries enable real-time payouts?

Real-time or near-instant cross-border payouts depend on the payment networks that move money behind the scenes. Modern payout systems lean on faster, more direct networks, including:

• Local instant payment networks: These are the real-time systems countries use for domestic transfers. Global payout providers connect to these networks through local banking partners. A payout that starts as a cross-border transaction is converted into a local, real-time deposit.

• Card networks: Services such as Visa Direct and Mastercard Send use the same card infrastructure that handles everyday transactions to deliver payouts straight to debit cards. Because these networks already connect to banks worldwide and run continuously, they offer a fast, reliable way for recipients to access their money.

• Digital wallets and mobile money: In regions where people rely more on mobile money than bank accounts, sending payouts into systems such as M-Pesa in Kenya or GCash in the Philippines gives recipients near-instant access to funds. These payment methods also expand reach into areas where traditional banking networks are limited or inconsistent.

• Modernized global networks: Systems such as SWIFT GPI aren’t “instant,” but they are much faster at end-to-end settlement compared to legacy correspondent banking. Some fintech networks build their own payout corridors through local partnerships, which route funds along whichever path is fastest for that country.

What are the benefits of automated payout systems?

Instead of teams managing spreadsheets and troubleshooting payment failures, automated processes run on rules and workflows.

Here are the benefits:

• Faster processing: Once payouts are triggered through an API call, a scheduled batch, or an internal event, the system handles the routing, conversion, and delivery with no manual delays. Recipients get paid faster, and payouts stay consistent even during volume spikes.

• Fewer errors and failed payments: Automated validation checks catch problems early, such as incorrect account numbers, unsupported currencies, or incomplete recipient details. Fixing issues upfront means fewer failed payouts and less back-and-forth between finance teams and payees.

• Scalability without extra headcount: Automated systems let companies expand into new markets or increase volume to thousands of payouts a day, without staffing up operations teams.

• Built-in compliance and security: Automated workflows can incorporate identity checks, sanctions screening, and fraud rules before a payout is sent. Sensitive data moves through encrypted channels instead of inboxes or shared sheets, which reduces exposure and human error.

• Visibility and easier reconciliation: Modern payout systems provide real-time tracking, structured logs, and reports that tie every payout back to its underlying transaction.

What compliance and FX risks complicate global payouts?

Cross-border payouts move through multiple regulatory environments and banking systems, which creates both legal and financial risks.

Here’s what to consider:

• Regulatory and licensing requirements: Every payout must meet the rules of both the sender’s country and the recipient’s, including local licensing obligations, reporting thresholds, and rules around what counts as a permitted cross-border transfer. Some countries require documentation for payouts above certain amounts, while others restrict which currencies can be used. Missing a rule can lead to frozen funds or penalties.

• Sanctions screening and fraud controls: Payments are screened against global watchlists, and anything suspicious can trigger a hold. Even a name that resembles a sanctioned entity can stall a payout. Fraud risk also rises when funds move across systems, especially where reversals are slow or impossible.

• Currency volatility: FX swings can change the value of a payout between the time it’s initiated and the moment it’s converted. Without a way to lock in rates or manage timing, businesses can lose profit margin due to movement in the markets.

• Hidden fees and multi-step conversions: Cross-border payouts can pass through multiple conversion points or intermediaries, and each one might take a cut. A recipient might lose several percent to conversion costs and intermediary fees.

• Workflow and settlement risk: More intermediaries mean more points of failure. A technical issue at an intermediary bank, a mismatch in data formatting, or even different banking hours across time zones can delay or derail a payout. When a payout does fail, tracing it through multiple networks requires an investigation.

How can businesses design efficient and compliant cross-border payout strategies?

A strong cross-border payout strategy balances speed, cost, reliability, and compliance. Businesses need to consider a handful of factors when designing their solution.

• Choose infrastructure that supports your geographic markets: Tools with broad country coverage and built-in compliance (such as Stripe Connect) let you reach dozens of markets without juggling multiple bank integrations or local licensing.

• Automate the payout workflow: Manual steps introduce delays and errors. Automating the workflow from end to end keeps operations stable as volume grows. Integrating payout systems with your core tooling (ERP systems, accounting platforms, marketplace logic) removes repetitive work and tightens controls.

• Include compliance in your process: Collect the right tax and identity information from payees at onboarding. Use platforms that automatically screen payouts against sanctions lists and monitor for unusual activity.

• Manage FX deliberately: Decide whether you want to convert each payout at spot rates, convert in larger blocks, or hold currency balances for predictable corridors. Prioritize partners who show rate transparency and minimize unnecessary conversion steps.

• Optimize payout routes by region: Real-time transfers, cards, digital wallets, and bank transfers work best in different markets. Use fast and reliable methods for each corridor instead of forcing everything through a single network.

• Maintain transparency: Real-time tracking, clear reporting, and simple communications reduce support load. When recipients understand how and when they’ll get paid, trust can increase.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payments solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.

• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.

• Improve payments performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.

• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% historical uptime and industry-leading reliability.

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.