Complexity is inevitable in cross-border payments, but clarity and collaboration can cut through it.
Dima Kats, CEO
At the Pay360 panel in March, I joined a conversation that echoed a growing sentiment across the industry: in a world where money moves instantly and globally, the old rules no longer fit. Financial borders are fading but regulation has yet to catch up.
This piece is a reflection on that discussion. It picks up the thread and considers where the conversation needs to go next if regulation is to keep pace with the future of global finance.
Money moves faster than ever, yet many regulatory frameworks still reflect an earlier era. If financial borders don’t really exist in a digital-first economy, why do businesses continue to navigate outdated and fragmented rules just to move money across borders?
The challenges of domestic payments (acceptance, platform resilience, costs) have largely been solved, but cross-border payments come with a whole host of new challenges to grapple with. Those challenges include slow settlement, high costs of intermediaries, and compliance logjams that can slow transaction speed to a crawl.
Then there is the sheer amount of fragmentation and lack of interoperability affecting cross-border payments too. We have some way to go before cross-border payments become as cheap, reliable and as seamless as consumer payments. And just as those challenges were solved domestically, similar progress is possible in cross-border payments too.
Technology is not the obstacle, it’s a regulatory mindset that has yet to evolve.. While recent efforts have aimed to bring more clarity, too often, businesses are still faced with uncertainty. And until then, cross-border payments are likely to remain slower, costlier, and unnecessarily complex.
Throughout my career, I’ve observed how outdated regulations unnecessarily restrain the potential for innovation, failing to align with the advancements and practical realities of today’s technology. We’re at a point where regulatory changes need to match the pace of technological advances to support global economic opportunities.
Removing obstacles to innovation
The challenge isn’t whether we regulate, it’s how we regulate. The payments and crypto sectors have seen huge growth, yet many businesses struggle to keep up with shifting compliance requirements.
Clear Junction’s research found that 37% of payment leaders cite regulatory clarity as their biggest challenge, while 24% find the authorisation process difficult to navigate.
This was evident with the rollout of the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which promised a unified framework but left many businesses uncertain about what compliance meant in practice.
By the time MiCA was fully enforced in December 2024, payments and crypto firms had been racing to understand whether they needed authorisation, how stablecoin rules would impact their business and whether their existing compliance strategies would hold up.
MiCA is a meaningful step toward greater consistency, however it also exposes a recurring problem: businesses are too often left scrambling to interpret new rules at the last minute. Instead of treating regulation as a box-ticking exercise, we need a regulatory culture that prioritises practical implementation alongside policy development. Clarity should precede enforcement, not follow it.
Data sharing that works for everyone
Beyond compliance, one of the biggest regulatory gaps in cross-border payments is the lack of coordinated data sharing. Effective fraud prevention depends on timely and secure information-sharing between institutions, yet inconsistent data policies often slow this process down.
The answer lies not in more data, but in more intelligent data sharing. Regulations need to support real-time, cross-border fraud intelligence without introducing unnecessary friction. That means global cooperation to ensure that businesses can access and share the right data while still upholding privacy and security standards.
Fintech has already proven that it can expand access to financial services, whether through mobile banking, stablecoins or real-time payments. But in many cases, regulatory complexity has slowed progress, preventing innovation from reaching the people who need it most.
For instance, stablecoins have the potential to reduce remittance costs and make global payments more accessible. Using stablecoins pegged to a unit of monetary value like the dollar can help companies avoid the expensive FX fee fluctuations that affect more exotic currencies (like the SAR) outside of the major currency pairs like USD/GBP or EUR/USD.
However, under MiCA, non-EU stablecoins are subject to tight transaction thresholds. While these rules aim to protect the euro’s dominance, they may limit viable alternatives for people and businesses seeking efficient cross-border payments.
Regulators should be asking: Are we enabling financial inclusion, or are we putting up more barriers? A more flexible, risk-based approach would enable fintechs to bring essential services to the unbanked and underbanked while still ensuring compliance and security.
A case for regulatory harmonisation
The patchwork of regulations across markets remains a key barrier to efficient global payments. Businesses moving money across borders don’t just deal with one compliance standard, they deal with many, each with its own interpretations and requirements.
MiCA was designed to streamline crypto regulation across the EU, replacing 27 different rulebooks with a single framework. But this level of standardisation shouldn’t be limited to crypto. Why stop at digital assets when payments and financial services would benefit from the same approach?
Global regulatory alignment isn’t about erasing national policies, it’s about reducing unnecessary friction for businesses that operate across multiple jurisdictions. A one-size-fits-all approach isn’t the answer, but collaboration among regulators can reduce friction and support compliance.
Regulators can contribute to supporting interoperability and cross-border payment efficiencies and therefore extend their reach to more sectors and facilitate more use cases. The Asia-Pacific region offers examples of this, where regulators are helping establish bilateral connections between domestic real time payment systems.
Where do we go from here?
While recent initiatives mark progress, they also highlight the need for a more agile regulatory framework, one that ensures businesses have clear guidance before new rules take effect, promotes data-sharing models that improve security and fosters financial inclusion rather than limiting it.
At Clear Junction, we see these challenges play out every day. Our work with financial institutions, payments providers and crypto firms has shown us that compliance doesn’t have to be a roadblock, it can be an enabler when done right. We advocate for a regulatory approach that evolves alongside technology, rather than reacting to it.
Cross-border payments will always involve complexity. The risks, costs and operational demands of moving money across jurisdictions are a natural part of global finance.
Regulation plays a vital role in managing those challenges but as the financial landscape evolves, so too must the frameworks that support it. With greater clarity, consistency and collaboration, we can build systems that are more resilient and easier to navigate.
The aim isn’t to remove complexity, but to handle it in ways that reflect how money moves today.