Today’s topic—cross-border payments—is not purely a crypto-ecosystem concept. It belongs to traditional finance, yet it is deeply connected to crypto finance. Some in financial markets even believe that the area that needs crypto finance the most is cross-border payments.
Cross-border payments are the key infrastructure that runs through international trade, global consumption, e-commerce supply chains, cross-border labor services, and financial-market liquidity. And as blockchain technology, stablecoins, smart contracts, and state-level central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) continue to mature, traditional cross-border payments are moving toward greater speed and lower costs.
This transformation not only reshapes business and finance, but may also reshape the global monetary system, methods of storing value, and the future landscape of financial sovereignty. Against this backdrop, whether you are an enterprise, a practitioner, or an ordinary user, you need to re-understand “what is changing in cross-border payments, and where it is heading.”
Starting With the Concept: What Is Cross-Border Payment?
Cross-border payment, simply put, is the flow of funds between transacting parties located in two different countries or regions. As long as the buyer and seller are in different sovereign jurisdictions—whether it’s a $5 game top-up, a $100,000 supply-chain settlement, a multinational company’s profit repatriation, or an overseas student’s tuition payment—it is categorized as a cross-border payment.
It is not a “transfer” in the traditional sense, but an entire complex collaboration chain jointly formed by currency, regulation, banks, clearing institutions, messaging networks, and foreign-exchange systems.
In the real world, a single cross-border payment typically goes through at least five steps:
Identity and compliance verification (KYC/AML): Banks must confirm you are not a terrorist and not using the financial system for money laundering.
Conversion from local currency to foreign currency (FX): People pay in JPY in Japan and settle in USD in the US—currency conversion is one of the core barriers in cross-border payments.
Sending payment instructions via SWIFT or a regional clearing network: This step is often the slowest and the most expensive, because SWIFT is only a messaging system and does not perform clearing.
Layer-by-layer transfers through multiple intermediary banks: Financial systems in different countries are not directly interconnected, so intermediary banks process the payment on their behalf.
Clearing and final settlement: During clearing, it must be confirmed whether regulatory requirements are met, whether sanctions lists are involved, and other sensitive compliance issues.
So when you think a cross-border payment is “money moving from A to B,” in reality that money has passed through multiple intermediaries.
Cross-border payments are a global symphony jointly participated in by 5–10 institutions, 3–7 networks, and 2 regulatory systems. And precisely because the process is extremely complex, it often results in:
Settlement times ranging from 1 to 5 days
Fees that are absurdly high ($20 to $50 is common)
Clearing failures or reversals between banks
Elevated FX costs
Poor transparency and no real-time tracking
This is why, in recent years, more and more tech companies, cross-border e-commerce players, fintech platforms, overseas gaming companies, and even giants like Sony, PayPal, and Grab have begun researching whether they can bypass the traditional banking system and make cross-border payments faster, more transparent, and cheaper.
And as blockchain stablecoins, CBDCs, and on-chain settlement technologies rise, cross-border payments are undergoing the largest structural rewrite since the birth of SWIFT.
The Essence of Cross-Border Payments: Not Just “Paying,” But the Distribution of Power Over Global Value Flows
Continuing from the concept above: in the past, cross-border payments typically relied on SWIFT, correspondent banking, and clearing houses—layers of intermediaries. The characteristics of this structure are:
Slow — a remittance from Asia to Europe may take 2–5 days
Expensive — fees accumulate across multiple intermediaries
Opaque — users do not know where the money is stuck
Not inclusive — small cross-border transactions have extremely high costs
Tightly bound to regulation — any country can “disconnect” certain regions from financial flows
In other words, cross-border payments control the “throttle valve” of global monetary circulation. Whoever controls the payment network controls:
whether capital can flow into a given country;
whether certain companies can participate in global trade;
whether a given currency can maintain its dominant position.
Therefore, cross-border payments have never been merely a technical service—they are part of the global financial power system.
Cross-Border Payments Are Entering a Once-in-a-Century Transformation: Blockchain Assets Become the Biggest Variable
Since 2020, the cross-border payments market has seen three unprecedented changes, and all of them are deeply related to Web3 technology.
Change 1: Stablecoin Penetration in Cross-Border Payments Is Faster Than Anyone Imagined
Today, stablecoin use cases have expanded from exchanges to real-world business scenarios, including:
cross-border e-commerce supply-chain settlements
outsourced labor payments
cross-border corporate trade settlements
overseas payroll for distributed teams
temporary capital hedging
replacing local currency in high-inflation economies
The IMF, World Bank, and BIS have released reports warning that “stablecoins pose challenges to monetary sovereignty in emerging markets.” Because in many countries, local currency is being replaced by USDT and USDC. For example:
in parts of Africa, USDT usage exceeds local bank transfers
in Latin America, over 25% of freelancers receive salary in USDT/USDC
in parts of the Middle East with high inflation, stablecoins are already widely used at retail
This is a structural change not seen in cross-border payments for 50 years.
Change 2: CEXs / Exchanges Are Becoming “New Global Clearing Centers”
Traditional cross-border payments rely on banks. But now: exchanges + stablecoins = a global real-time clearing network. A large volume of cross-border payment demand (especially in Asia and South America) is being routed through:
USDT / USDC transfers
internal CEX transfers
on-chain stablecoin payments
OTC settlement
—replacing traditional banking channels.
Trading platforms like SuperEx effectively already have:
multi-currency on-ramps
global fund mobility
24/7 real-time settlement
intelligent risk-control systems
user-level cross-border payment capability
They are assuming the function of “quasi cross-border settlement centers.”
Change 3: Enterprises Are Proactively Exploring Stablecoin Cross-Border Payments (Sony as a Representative Example)
Sony issuing a USD stablecoin is a typical example, which we discussed in an article a few days ago. So why would multinational enterprises do stablecoins? Very simply:
cross-border fees are too expensive
existing systems are too slow
payment experiences on the user side are too fragmented
digital businesses are already globalized
cross-border transactions lack a unified financial base layer
Web3 games, e-commerce, and content services need on-chain payments
This means: cross-border payments are no longer the exclusive business of banks, but a competition between the technology industry and the financial industry.
The Future of Cross-Border Payments Will Belong to Blockchain
Some ask “why?” The reason is very clear: blockchain solves the infrastructure problem of global value flows.
1. Real-Time Settlement Is the Only Direction for the Future of Payments
On-chain payments are:
24/7
seconds-level settlement
supports any amount
Can traditional systems do this? Clearly not.
2. Cross-Border Fee Rates Are the Core Metric That Determines a Payment Revolution
Stablecoin payments are almost “near-zero fee.” In cross-border e-commerce, freelancing, and outsourcing industries, the cost advantage is extremely obvious, for example:
Western Union fee: 5%–15%
SWIFT fee: $20–$45
US bank card cross-border fees: 2%–4%
stablecoins: $0.1–$1 (depending on the chain)
When the cost gap is that large, crypto’s impact on traditional cross-border payments is a “dimension-reduction strike,” and channel migration will be very fast.
3. Blockchain Provides a “Globally Unified Account Model”
Traditional payments:
each country is an island
banks are like “ferries between islands”
multiple intermediaries are needed to reach the destination
Blockchain payments:
wallets are globally universal
assets can move across chains
the logic is “network-native global reachability”
This is the root cause of what the World Bank calls a “cross-border payment paradigm shift.”
4. Stablecoins Allow Enterprises to Reduce FX Risk
Multinationals lose tens of billions of dollars each year to FX costs. But with stablecoins:
funds no longer need repeated FX conversions
different countries can directly use USDT for unified settlement
financial structures become more controllable
global business integration becomes easier
The cost structure of cross-border payments is therefore fundamentally changed.
Regulatory Game: Monetary Sovereignty vs. Technological Innovation
The growth of stablecoin cross-border payments is so fast that regulators are intervening. The IMF’s core concern is currency substitution.
IMF reports explicitly warn:
stablecoins may weaken demand for domestic currency
weaken central banks’ control over interest rates and liquidity
weaken seigniorage revenue
The reason is: “when domestic currency is unstable, users prefer USDT.” This is a challenge to national sovereignty.
So you can see regulators tightening in a more unified manner:
Japan requires stablecoins to be JPY-pegged
the US requires stablecoins to have 100% US Treasury reserves
the EU’s MiCA begins regulating on-chain payments
dozens of emerging markets begin banning non-custodial wallets
The essence of regulation is: controlling money flows, not controlling technology itself. Put differently: whoever can control cross-border payments can control the fate of currency.
Over the Next Decade, Cross-Border Payments Will Be Co-Dominated by Three Forces
Force 1: Traditional Finance (SWIFT, Banks)
strong regulation
strong compliance
mature infrastructure
But the shortcomings are obvious:
slow speed
high cost
insufficient technological innovation
They will continue to exist, but will more often handle large-value inter-institutional clearing.
Force 2: Stablecoin Payments (USDT/USDC + Exchanges)
This is the fastest-growing force:
cheap, fast, globally reachable
blockchain is naturally cross-border
fits new economies like e-commerce, gaming, freelancing
enterprises can reduce payment costs
excellent user experience
Stablecoins may become “global internet-native money,” especially in high-inflation countries.
Force 3: CBDC Systems
For example:
China’s digital RMB
Eurozone digital euro
Brazil’s Drex
India’s digital rupee
CBDCs have enormous future potential, but are currently constrained by:
weak international interoperability
no unified blockchain cross-border infrastructure
extremely complex regulatory structures
In the short term, stablecoins will continue to hold the initiative.
Conclusion
The future of cross-border payments has already arrived—and it is moving faster than anyone imagined. Blockchain, stablecoins, digital assets, exchanges, and smart contracts are building a new global financial base layer. Countries, enterprises, and users are all repositioning their roles in this transformation.
And for users and the industry, the earlier you understand the transformation logic of cross-border payments, the more you can seize the financial dividends of the next decade. SuperEx will also continue to be one of the critical infrastructures of the global digital finance era, playing a key role in the new age of payment globalization and value internetization.
