Canada, Meet Finix: A New Era of Unified Cross-Border Payments Has Arrived

During my first payments gig, I remember being incredibly confused by why it was impossible for every payment processor we worked with to turn on multicurrency support or onboard merchants in other countries. 

It was especially confusing given that every payment provider we worked with claimed to support hundreds of currencies and countries. After doing a bit of sleuthing, we learned that payment processors have struggled and failed to support multinational payments due to four main reasons:

1. Most processors were spun out of banks that operate regionally or nationally (more on this below)

2. Most processors are really old (as in so old they were developed before the introduction of the internet!)

3. Most processors outsource key processing capabilities to other legacy providers and vendors 

4. Most processors don’t build new tech and instead acquire it via mergers and acquisitions (M&A)

JPMorgan does a good job of explaining this in its annual payments industry primer:

“Majority of competitors are local, not global… Most payment service providers are local, because, historically, local banks did this job and, thus, the merchant acquiring business was also local. … There are other payment service providers that are, in reality, local but have a "global" wraparound. …. The reason we call them local with a global wraparound is that the global businesses were created by one or more acquisitions and thus the companies do not have a single platform, but, instead, multiple payment platforms with different geographic platforms and/or different platforms for the different channels: mobile, e-commerce and in-store. Thus, these “global” players cannot provide the seamless single platform end-to-end payments solution for a truly global client.“

In other words, the marketing pages for payment processors claiming to support hundreds of countries and currencies conveniently forget to mention that there’s more than one gateway per country (e.g. multiple APIs, multiple reporting services, multiple dashboard logins, multiple contracts, multiple sandbox environments). 

These platforms never play well together and are bogged down by countless feature parity issues. This more than doubles the integration complexity and timelines, and introduces a host of other complexities. In fact, only a handful of companies have ever successfully integrated into more than one platform. Additionally, most banking charters are limited to a single country, inherently precluding them from supporting multinational payments.

In practice, this means multinational businesses have historically been forced to maintain multiple processor agreements within each domicile they operate in. Take a look:

Given the infancy of embedded payments and the payment facilitator model, independent software vendors (ISVs) and marketplaces have had it far worse. Most have been precluded from entering new markets entirely because the available local payment processors don’t fulfill the specific requirements and compliance obligations needed to support these payment models. Nor have they been able to profit off of payments. 

In an era of rapid fintech innovation and evolution, only a handful of players can unlock a more seamless multinational payment experience. To my knowledge, they can be counted on one hand, yet none enable payment monetization or address the fragmentation that makes multinational payments so complex.

With Finix, merchants can now consolidate their payment relationships and reap the benefits of only needing to maintain one integration, relationship, and contract for their payment needs. Check it out — a little more straightforward, right?

Additionally, merchants can take advantage of local acquiring benefits that historically have only been available to larger enterprises, including:

• Improved authorization rates

• Lower costs tied to FX exchange rates, interchange, and card brand fees

• Reduction in false fraud detection triggered by local issuer risk systems

If you’re looking to enhance your payments infrastructure in Canada, we’ve got you covered. Finix is your one-stop shop to unlock accessible, comprehensive, fast, and secure payments across borders. All through one API.  

To learn more, please reach out to our team.