For decades, cross-border payments moved along a well-worn path. SWIFT messaging, correspondent banking chains, and multi-day settlement windows defined the category.
That infrastructure works well for large-value flows between developed economies. But it badly underserves the corridors where the next billion digital consumers actually live.
Think of the remittance lanes into Sub-Saharan Africa. The gig-economy payouts flowing into Southeast Asia. The e-commerce sellers are collecting from Latin America. In these markets, a recipient is more likely to hold a mobile wallet than a bank account.
The gap between 30-second settlement and a 5-day wait is often the gap between a platform that works and one that doesn’t.
Global mobile-wallet users are projected to exceed 5.2 billion by the end of 2026, with transaction volumes passing the $12 trillion mark. Stablecoins have crossed from experiment into operational infrastructure. Major networks now support stablecoin-funded settlement in emerging-market corridors.
The G20’s cross-border payments roadmap targets sub-1% retail costs and near-real-time settlement by 2027. That deadline is pushing regulators and providers to close the gap faster.
Here are the five providers best positioned for this shift, ranked by network depth in emerging markets, mobile-wallet reach, and momentum heading into 2026.
1. Thunes
HQ: Singapore
Thunes was spun out of TransferTo, a Singapore mobile payments business founded in 2005. The cross-border payments arm branched off in 2016 under CEO Peter De Caluwe, alongside TransferTo founder Eric Barbier.
The rebrand to Thunes was completed in early 2019. De Caluwe led the company through its early years, moved into a Deputy Chairman role in January 2024, and returned as CEO in October 2025 after the roughly two-year tenure of former Worldpay executive Floris de Kort.
The company has raised over $362M across five funding rounds. Its $150M Series D was led by Apis Partners and Vitruvian Partners. Other investors include Visa, Marshall Wace, Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Helios Investment Partners, GGV Capital, and Checkout.com.
The Direct Global Network now spans 140 countries, 90 currencies, and 220+ payment methods. It has direct connections to 145 mobile wallet brands, including M-Pesa, GCash, AliPay, WeChat Pay HK, JazzCash, and Easypaisa.
Thunes holds 50 regulatory licences, including MAS, FCA, ACPR, FinCEN, and 50 US state money-transmitter licences. It serves 720+ Network Members, including Uber, Deliveroo, Grab, Airbnb, Payoneer, WorldRemit, Equity Bank, PayPal, and Remitly.
Two in-house products anchor the stack. The SmartX Treasury System handles FX and liquidity automation. The Fortress Compliance Platform manages transaction monitoring and sanctions screening.
Recent momentum has been substantial. Thunes acquired compliance specialist Tookitaki in 2022, folded in Limonetik as Thunes Collections, and acquired Tilia in 2025. Tilia is an all-in-one payments platform for online games, virtual worlds, and creator economies, previously owned by Second Life’s parent Linden Lab.
It has also launched Pay-to-Stablecoin-Wallets and extended Pay-to-Banks and Pay-to-Wallets to the 11,500 banks on Swift. A partnership with Circle enables USDC-based settlement.
In 2026, Juniper Research placed Thunes in the top three globally alongside Swift and Visa. The company also won Best Cross-Border Payment Solution at the MPE Awards.
2. TerraPay
HQ: London, UK
TerraPay was founded in 2014 with a specific mandate: solve the last-mile problem of cross-border payments in markets where mobile-wallet penetration far outpaces banking.
Co-founder and CEO Ambar Sur has positioned the company as a specialist in underserved corridors across Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Backed by institutional investors including the IFC and Prime Ventures, TerraPay operates from London. The network is specifically tuned for emerging-market delivery rather than broad horizontal coverage.
The network today reaches 150+ countries. It connects partners to 3.7 billion+ mobile wallets and 7.5 billion+ bank accounts.
TerraPay holds 31+ licences and regulatory approvals in over 30 markets. It processes around 97% of transactions in under 60 seconds.
Strategic partners include Visa, Sabre Direct Pay, and Cobre. Visa uses TerraPay’s rails to reach 32 additional wallets across 22 markets. Sabre Direct Pay extends the network into travel payments, while Cobre handles Latin American distribution.
TerraPay also integrates directly with Swift. This allows 11,500 financial institutions to reach mobile wallet endpoints through existing correspondent banking workflows.
The company’s Wallet Interoperability Council was launched to align standards for cross-border mobile money. It has become a reference initiative for the category.
For MTOs, NGOs, travel suppliers, and banks whose recipient base sits predominantly in Africa or high-growth Asia, TerraPay is among the deepest networks available.
3. Nium
HQ: Singapore
Nium traces its origins to 2014. Co-founders Prajit Nanu and Michael Bermingham launched Instarem as a consumer remittance platform in Singapore.
The company pivoted to B2B payments in 2016 and rebranded to Nium in 2019. Nanu continues as CEO.
Nium has raised over $250M from investors including Visa, Riverwood Capital, Tribe Capital, and NewView Capital. The company has publicly targeted a US IPO for the end of 2026.
The real-time cross-border infrastructure spans 190+ countries, with real-time corridors in 100+ markets and support for 100 currencies. Local collections are available in 40 markets.
Nium holds licences in 40+ jurisdictions, issues 38 million card tokens per year, and processes over $25B in annual transaction volume. Customers include Emirates NBD, KBank, Ebury, MOIN, and Paycell.
As a principal card issuer on Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and UATP, Nium also runs closed-loop payment programs for airlines and travel.
Stablecoin infrastructure has been a major focus in 2026. In March, Nium launched a dual-network stablecoin card issuance platform. It enables companies holding stablecoins to spend them at hundreds of millions of Visa and Mastercard acceptance points via a single API.
Weeks later, Nium integrated Coinbase’s USDC settlement stack. Customers can now fund cross-border payouts in USDC and settle in local fiat, eliminating the need to pre-fund destination markets.
Combined with its participation in Visa’s stablecoin settlement pilot, this positions Nium as one of the strongest bridges between traditional and digital payment rails.
4. dLocal
HQ: Montevideo, Uruguay
dLocal (NASDAQ: DLO) was founded in Uruguay in 2016 by Sebastián Kanovich. It has focused exclusively on emerging markets from day one.
The company went public on Nasdaq in 2021 and is now led by CEO Pedro Arnt, who joined from MercadoLibre in 2023.
Latin America still generates around 75% of revenue. Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have become the faster-growing segments of the business. Enterprise customers include Amazon, Spotify, Microsoft, and Uber.
The “One dLocal” model is the company’s core pitch. It offers a single API, one contract, and one platform for pay-ins, payouts, FX, and treasury across 44+ emerging markets and 1,000+ local payment methods.
This replaces the otherwise necessary practice of signing separate processors, local entities, and acquirers in each country. dLocal focuses on regions where payment fragmentation, currency volatility, and regulatory complexity create meaningful barriers to entry.
The company’s defensive moat is essentially the difficulty of replicating its local licences and direct banking partnerships.
In April 2026, dLocal launched Stablecoin Full. Merchants can now accept, hold, convert, and pay out using stablecoins across emerging markets through one API. The product treats stablecoins as just another local payment method within the existing orchestration layer.
Fireblocks provides custody infrastructure, Circle is a key liquidity partner, and Convera extends regional distribution.
For enterprise merchants whose primary challenge is compliant money movement across Africa, LatAm, and frontier Asia, few competitors match dLocal’s specificity.
5. Rapyd
HQ: London, UK / Tel Aviv, Israel
Rapyd was founded in 2016 by Arik Shtilman, Arkady Karpman, and Omer Priel. It was originally called CashDash and launched as a consumer wallet.
Shtilman, a cloud-computing entrepreneur with no prior payments background, remains CEO. The company pivoted from consumer wallet to B2B fintech-as-a-service after realising the real problem was infrastructure fragmentation, not consumer experience.
Rapyd has raised over $1B across nine rounds. Investors include Stripe, General Catalyst, Tiger Global, BlackRock, Fidelity, Target Global, and Spark Capital. After peaking at a $15B valuation in 2022, it currently trades at around $4.5B.
The global payments network offers payouts to 190+ countries, 140 currencies, and 900+ locally preferred payment methods. These span wallets, bank transfers, and cash.
Rapyd is a licensed Visa and Mastercard acquirer in Europe, the UK, Israel, and Singapore. The Virtual Accounts product covers 40+ countries and 25 currencies.
The fintech-as-a-service stack bundles four products: Collect, Disburse, Wallet, and Issuing. Together these give clients a full infrastructure layer through a single integration.
The 2023 acquisition of PayU’s Global Payments Organization for $610M significantly deepened Rapyd’s emerging-market coverage. The deal added depth in Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa.
Major customers include Adidas, Google, Rappi, Uber, and Netflix.
Rapyd has featured on FXC Intelligence’s Top 100 Cross-Border Payment Companies for five consecutive years. It was also named Best Cross-Border Merchant Solution at the MPE Awards 2024.
Its core positioning is simple: a single embedded fintech layer for businesses going global without building the plumbing themselves.
The shift beneath the rankings
What separates these five from their legacy competitors isn’t just reach. It’s architectural philosophy.
Each has invested in direct connections to local rails and mobile-wallet operators rather than piggybacking on correspondent banking. Each has built FX and liquidity automation in-house.
And each is, in different ways, rebuilding its stack to treat stablecoins as a first-class payment method rather than a bolt-on.
For businesses choosing a partner, the right question isn’t “who is biggest?” It’s “who has the deepest, most compliant, most reliable connections in the corridors that matter to me?”
Thunes leads on mobile-wallet interoperability and balanced global breadth. TerraPay is the last-mile specialist. Nium and Rapyd offer broader infrastructure suites for fintech builders.
dLocal is the pure-play emerging-markets bet, most compelling if Latin America, Africa, and high-growth Asia form the core of your footprint.
The next 18 months will likely accelerate further separation between specialists and generalists in this space. This is driven by G20 2027 deadlines, stablecoin regulatory clarity, and the rapid growth of mobile wallets.
Expect the leaders to get deeper rather than broader.
