By IWEC Foundation Partner, Corpay Cross-Border Solutions 

To discuss your cross-border needs please contact
Danielle Orcutt, National Account Manager, Corpay (Fleetcor NYSE FLT) +1-929-504-8791, danielle.orcutt@corpay.com

Credit card, direct deposit, check, cash, e-pay… making domestic payments is a breeze these days, with enough flexibility to offer optimization based on your vendor’s payment preferences. International payments, on the other hand, are much more complex, and bring to mind painful images of cumbersome wire submissions.

Alternate options, such as fintech solutions, enable companies to submit all their domestic and international payments in one file. If the fintech also includes vendor maintenance as part of their services, then the payment file draws banking details from the fintech’s vendor network, eliminating the responsibility of maintaining that data from AP teams’ plates.

But before we delve too deeply into the process, let’s take a step back and explore nomenclature. Over time, companies have imposed their own internal vocabulary over common terms. Terms like ‘wire’, ‘direct deposit’, and ‘ACH’ are often used interchangeably, even though they operate differently. Let’s synchronize our understanding of these words.

What’s in a name?

International vs. cross-border vs. FX

“Cross-border payments” is a self-explanatory term—the definition is right in the name. These funds cross international borders to reach their destination.

“International payments” also describes cross-border payment activity, but carries other specific interpretations as well. For example, it may also refer to funds transferred within a single country through a bank or fintech located outside of that country (e.g. Canada to Canada, but through a U.S. fintech).

The term “FX” (Foreign Exchange) is occasionally thrown around to describe international payments, though it typically refers to currency exchange instead of the transmission of funds.

At the end of the day, as long as your company recognizes the nuances, the use of any term is fine. For simplicity’s sake, the rest of this article will refer to “international payments”.

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