What are Cross Border Payments and Can You Pay with Crypto?

The foundation of a successful modern startup is often a world-class, globally distributed team, and tapping into this international talent pool introduces a critical operational challenge: securely and efficiently managing payments across borders. If your finance team is still relying on old-school wire transfers, you're not just accepting high fees; you're inheriting massive operational and security risks. Here’s why.

The threat of financial compromise is significant. According to the 2025 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey Report, a striking 79% of organizations faced actual or attempted payments fraud activity in 2024. When these attacks succeed, the losses are compounding, as the average merchant spends $4.60 for every dollar lost to fraud. The days of manually processing international payments are over; achieving financial efficiency now requires an automated, API-driven solution that is both fast and secure.

What is an Example of a Cross-border Payment?

A cross-border payment is any financial transaction that involves a sender and a receiver located in different countries. It’s the movement of funds from one national jurisdiction to another.

For example, when your US-based startup pays a highly specialized software engineer in Warsaw, Poland, or an accountant in Toronto, Canada, you are initiating a cross-border payment.

Historically, these transfers are complex. They rely on the aging correspondent banking network, often referred to as the SWIFT system, which can slow payments down to three to five business days and introduce multiple points of friction, including intermediary fees and opaque foreign exchange (FX) markups. This combination of delay and hidden cost directly drains your startup’s working capital.

Can Cryptocurrency be Used for Cross-border Transactions?

Absolutely, and with significant advantages. Cryptocurrency, particularly stablecoins, is fast becoming the preferred payment rail for tech-forward companies due to its inherent speed and low transaction costs compared to traditional banking.

Instead of navigating the complex web of intermediary banks, crypto utilizes blockchain technology for peer-to-peer value transfer. This bypasses the old system entirely, leading to near-instant settlement and drastically reduced fees.

The massive investment flowing into the startup ecosystem signals a clear appetite for payment innovation. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector, which often sets the pace for new technology adoption, secured nearly $19 billion in global venture funding in Q3 2025. These high-growth companies demand a payment infrastructure that can keep up, making instant-settlement solutions a necessity, not a luxury.

What Crypto is Best for Cross-border Payments?

For business payroll and contractor payouts, the best form of crypto is stablecoins.

A stablecoin, like USDC or USDT, is a cryptocurrency pegged 1:1 to a stable asset, typically the US Dollar (USD).

• Why Stablecoins? The main challenge with using highly volatile assets like Bitcoin for payroll is the constant price fluctuation, which complicates accounting and introduces exchange risk. Stablecoins eliminate this volatility while preserving all the benefits of blockchain: they are fast, cheap, and always on.
• The Business Impact: This stability, combined with the technology's speed, is why financial institutions are now heavily invested in this space. The total value of the stablecoin market is projected to surge to $4 trillion by 2030.

By utilizing a global payouts platform that integrates crypto rails, you can initiate a payment in USD, have the platform manage the conversion to a stablecoin, and have your contractor receive the funds in minutes, not days. This improves talent retention and frees your finance team from reconciliation headaches.

How to Choose the Best Cross Border Payments API

In the competitive world of high-growth startups, financial efficiency is a competitive edge. Relying on slow, expensive, and manually intensive cross-border payment systems is a drain on your resources and a risk to your security.

A modern payments API partner must offer a multi-rail platform that ensures the fastest, most cost-efficient route for every transaction. Dots is built to reduce or eliminate the friction associated with traditional wires by intelligently routing payouts through local bank rails and instant cryptocurrency (stablecoin) rails. This approach provides instant, transparent, and compliant settlement while significantly reducing fees and protecting your business from the fraud risks inherent in manual payout processes.

Ready to do cross-border crypto payouts? Book a FREE demo today!