In 2025, cross-border payments took center stage as businesses sought to navigate a landscape fraught with geopolitical uncertainty, supply-chain reconfiguration, and continued pressure on margins. As challenges mounted, the need for efficient international transactions became paramount for companies aiming to sustain and expand their global operations.
Rather than a singular technological breakthrough, the year saw the emergence of a new operating model characterized by multi-rail, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven payment orchestration. Financial institutions, fintech companies, and corporations shifted from debating which payment rail would dominate to developing systems that utilized all available options, including cards, Automated Clearing House (ACH) methods, real-time payment networks, local clearing systems, alternative payment methods (APMs), and in specific corridors, blockchain-based settlement.
The backdrop of tariff turbulence, volatile demand, and tighter working capital conditions underscored the importance of faster and more predictable cross-border payments, translating directly into a competitive edge for businesses. Orchestration emerged as the unsung hero of this transformation, serving as the intelligence layer that made complexity manageable, streamlining fragmented infrastructures into a coherent transaction flow.
Cross-border payments operate at the intersection of regulatory compliance, legacy banking systems, and global fragmentation. Even established multinationals, which typically maintain strong banking relationships, often face opaque pricing structures and limited visibility into end-to-end costs. Smaller and mid-market firms frequently encounter even tougher challenges, absorbing higher foreign exchange (FX) markups and intermediary fees for basic access to these essential services.
Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) have long focused on optimizing spend management, forecasting, and reporting. However, payment systems have lagged behind, creating a widening gap as expectations for real-time visibility and control clash with decades-old infrastructure. The increasing fragmentation of payment landscapes has made orchestration crucial. While cards remain dominant in certain markets, APMs such as bank transfers, mobile money, and QR-based systems lead in others. Digital wallets integrating these options under a single interface can help reduce complexity for finance teams while expanding their reach.
Citi’s head of Cross-Border Payments, Services, Emanuela Saccarola, noted, “A significant use case for wallet payments is within our Banks sector, where many banks are heavily investing in enhancing their remittances offering.” She emphasized that banks place high value on the ability to disburse payments into wallets, alongside cross-border instant payments and card transactions. Saccarola added, “Globally, broader interoperability must be a key priority,” highlighting the race to enable payments providers to connect domestic systems into a global grid operational around the clock.
For CFOs, the ability to offer multiple payment options translates into leverage against banks and payment providers, enabling rapid market entry without the need to rebuild infrastructure while also fostering resilience against outages or regulatory disruptions.
As the orchestration layer of platforms and banking networks processed more transactions, a flywheel effect was set in motion throughout 2025. Increased transaction volume led to greater data generation, which, in turn, improved AI models. Enhanced models yielded higher success rates and lower costs, attracting even more volume to the payment systems. Structured data is expected to amplify this cycle, with the transition to the richer, XML-based ISO 20022 format for global payments poised to feed analytics engines that can identify new optimization opportunities.
A payment initiated as an ISO 20022 message can adapt dynamically to use a real-time rail in one market, a local clearing system in another, or a wallet-based payout, all while maintaining data fidelity. This nuance is crucial, as orchestration increasingly hinges on balancing settlement speed versus cost, compliance friction versus customer experience, and liquidity impact versus FX exposure.
The focus on payments innovation is shifting from launching new rails to extracting intelligence from existing ones. According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report titled “The Treasury Management Playbook: Spotlight on Cross-Border Payments,” cross-border payments have ascended in importance as companies seek to minimize the frictions associated with international transactions.
In a year marked by uncertainty, efficiency became a strategic imperative. Multi-rail access provided the foundational resources, while AI offered the necessary intelligence. Ultimately, it was orchestration—the ability to cohesively and reliably integrate these elements at scale—that proved to be the standout feature of 2025.
For further insights on cross-border payments, visit PYMNTS.
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