Blockchain has long ceased to be the domain of tech geeks and enigmatic crypto traders that can recite Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper by heart, enchanting the public imagination with its promise to disrupt industries from peer-to-peer payments to identity verification. It is hard to think of an industry more in need of disruption than that of cross-border payments. While sending money to a local recipient is a matter of searching for their Venmo nickname and coming up with a clever message to accompany the payment, an international payment can feel like a devil’s obstacle course.
While accounting for around $716 billion in P2P payments in 2019, according to the World Bank, cross-border transfers remain one of the most inconvenient consumer transactions, plagued with head-scratching processing times, notoriously exorbitant fees, and a troubling lack of transparency.