Cross-border Payments: A Build vs. Buy Guide for Banks and Credit Unions

Ask most bank or credit union executives whether they'd like to offer international payments to their corporate banking customers, and the answer is almost always yes. Ask whether they want to build the global infrastructure themselves, and the answer changes fast.

That build-versus-buy decision is at the center of a recent Ascendant article on how financial institutions can offer cross-border payments without taking on the cost and risk of building it from scratch. 

The problem: Corporate banking customers expect cross-border payments to be as simple as sending money domestically. Institutions that can't deliver fast, transparent cross-border payments risk losing not just that transaction, but the broader relationship. Building a global payment infrastructure from the ground up is expensive, complex, and often unrealistic for many banks and credit unions.

Why Building the Infrastructure Yourself is Harder Than It Looks

Building a global payment infrastructure from the ground up requires:

• Global banking and payment network relationships
• Foreign exchange capabilities
• AML and KYC controls
• Regulatory compliance across multiple jurisdictions
• Payment routing logic and currency conversion processes
• Payment tracking and reporting
• Ongoing maintenance as regulations and networks change

The Alternative: Embedded, White-label Solution

With an embedded, white-label solution, the bank or credit union keeps its brand and its customer relationship. The technology partner handles routing, FX, compliance, and settlement behind the scenes. 

Why This Is Bigger Than a Single Product Decision

The build-versus-buy question rarely stops at cross-border payments. Once an institution decides to partner rather than build, the same logic tends to extend to other parts of the payment operations: receivables, domestic payables, merchant processing, and reconciliation. Coordinating separate vendors for each of these creates the same operational drag internally that a homegrown cross-border platform would.

This is the case for an integrated payment ecosystem rather than a single point solution. FTNI and Ascendant work with hundreds of banks and credit unions offering lockbox services, advanced Remote Deposit Capture (RDC), credit card and ACH processing, online and mobile payments, and more; in addition to cross-border payment infrastructure, so institutions aren't stitching together multiple partners to modernize their financial services and product offerings to their corporate banking customers. One relationship, one integration effort, one place to go when priorities shift.

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This blog post draws on Ascendant's full article, which goes deeper into why customer expectations for international payments have changed, what embedded and white-label payments actually mean in practice, and a full checklist for evaluating a payment infrastructure partner. 

Click here to read the full article

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How FTNI & Ascendant Can Support You

Together, Ascendant and FTNI are building a leading financial technology portfolio spanning accounts receivable (AR), accounts payable (AP), foreign exchange (FX), and cash application automation, giving businesses and financial institutions one trusted partner to streamline money in, money out, and all the reconciliation in between.

We want to help businesses and financial institutions identify the challenges payment operations are facing and support the conversation around the future of AR, AP, and FX solutions delivered from a single platform.