Introduction
Despite some recent pessimism, Indian manufacturing and services exporters are experiencing record growth rates. Most experts agree that India's exports are now on a multi-year high growth trajectory. But it is not only the exporters that are enjoying this boom. Platform companies that directly or indirectly support exporters are downstream beneficiaries of this boom.
There’s a catch though. Platforms operate in intense competitive niches. Niche leaders are, therefore, always looking to add difficult-to-replicate features that help them differentiate from their peers and gain a larger market share. One such feature that most Platforms identify is the ability to help customers transact and collect international payments. But this is not an easy capability to build. Enabling cross-border remittances requires that not only difficult engineering problems be overcome but also comply with tough regulatory and legal hurdles.
Xflow, India’s leading payments infrastructure company, now offers Platforms a ready-to-go, legally-compliant and military-grade-secure solution to precisely enable this capability. Platforms in partnership with Xflow, can enable their customers to collect international payments seamlessly within the Platform’s existing workflow.
Benefits of Partnering with Xflow
Today, diverse Platforms like Transfer Pricing Experts, Neo Banks, Lending Businesses, and even Domestic Payment Providers are working with Xflow to help their customers move millions of dollars. Why are these Platforms working with Xflow?
We answer this question in 2 steps.
- What do your customers get?
- What do you get?
Let's first answer how Platform’s customers benefit because Platforms must first determine if their customers will see value in collecting global payments through the Platform.
Customer Benefits
Let's first understand how businesses receive funds into their India bank account today and their challenges.
- Typically, the Indian exporter will share their bank account details and their bank's SWIFT/BIC code with their overseas buyers. The buyer will initiate the international wire transfer, a SWIFT payment. SWIFT payments cost ~ $50 so somebody has to pay it.
- Depending on which banks are involved, there could be multiple correspondent banks between the buyers' and exporters' banks. The correspondent banks may have their additional charge.
- Due to such intermediaries, funds might take much longer than the typical one-business-day settlement in international wire transfers. Anecdotally, we know that majority of the transactions are delayed beyond one business day, and could take several days to settle without visibility.
- When the funds arrive in India, they do not land directly into the exporter's bank account. Instead, they land into a suspense account. The exporter must now follow up with their relationship manager with appropriate documentation to get the funds credited to their bank account. Depending on the bank and relationship, this could take an additional 2 - 5 days, starving the exporter's business of necessary cash flow.
All cross-border transactions involve currency conversion (FX), another source of frustration for exporters. This process has a high degree of opacity, making it very difficult to ascertain the true cost of payments. Payment providers often quote FX rates in bps or paise without revealing the benchmark rate. Because of these experience issues, some exporters seek out 3rd party payment providers. Unfortunately, these solutions do not work for many businesses, given that most 3rd party providers have a transaction size limit of $10,000, and the improved experience comes at a much higher cost.
An Xflow-powered payment solution on your platform can address all these issues.
With Xflow, Platforms can:
- Offer multiple local-to-overseas-buyers payment options. These payment methods are cheaper and more reliable than SWIFT.
- Provide next-business-day settlement directly into the exporter's bank account. There is no back and forth with the bank.
- Facilitate payments of $1000 or $1 million, as there are no transaction size limits.
- Ensure 100% compliant money movement with foreign inward remittance advice (FIRA) issued by an RBI-authorized global bank.
- Give customers transparent and competitive FX rates benchmarked to mid-market or interbank rates.
Platform Benefits
Completely white labeled solution
Xflow operates behind the scenes to ensure uninterrupted engagement between the Platform and its users. Platform’s users will never know about Xflow.
New Revenue Stream
Platform can earn commissions on every transaction that it enables. Xflow provides multiple levers, allowing the Platform to create unique revenue model and personalized pricing for each user.
Out-of-the-box compliance and safety
Xflow’s deep integration with RBI-authorized tier 1 banking partners, best-in-class screening technologies, and transaction monitoring system makes every transaction compliant and safe.
Powerful and Flexible APIs
Platforms can do everything, including customer onboarding over APIs. Xflow APIs don’t just abstract away the complexity involved in cross-border money movement but also offer near infinite options to carve an experience that seamlessly blends into the Platform’s product.
Platforms can also manage the show using Xflow’s out-of-the-box Dashboard and without writing a single line of code.
Super fast integration
While designing our APIs, Xflow has put a lot of emphasis on keeping things simple, which allows Platforms to build faster with fewer resources. Typical integration takes less than two weeks.
To summarize, adding international payments on your platform can help you deepen your customer engagement, and build a moat that can propel your business or keep you ahead of your competition. If you choose to build such a moat, Xflow’s global payment infrastructure, which is trusted by many fast scaling platforms like yourself, will be the perfect choice. Reach out to us at contact@xflowpay.com or request a demo now.
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