Expanding Internationally? How to Handle Global Mass Payouts

Businesses aiming to expand into international markets must establish a secure and efficient global mass payout infrastructure. Without a reliable system, managing payments to suppliers, vendors, partners, and customers worldwide becomes complex and unsustainable. 

A global payout platform like Thunes simplifies this process. Thunes enables seamless global mass payouts by offering financial products that connect with over 120 mobile wallet providers and reach four billion bank accounts.

This guide covers the importance of global payout solutions, common challenges businesses face, and how to implement cross-border payments to support international growth.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Global Mass Payouts for International Businesses

Whether you’re a business owner, CFO, finance manager, or an eCommerce or SaaS company, the ability to make a global payout is critical for businesses that want to operate internationally. Without them, it would be challenging – or even impossible in some cases –  for businesses to pay;

• Customers
• Suppliers
• Vendors
• Partners
• Freelancers/contractors
• Remote employees

If a company wants to expand its operations worldwide, partner with international affiliates and develop relationships with overseas suppliers, it must have a reliable and secure global mass payout infrastructure. 

Challenges of Managing Global Mass Payouts

These are the top challenges organisations must consider in implementing global mass payouts.

Technical Complexity

Technical complexity is a costly obstacle organisations face when implementing mass payout systems. These payment systems require robust technological infrastructures to direct money to the correct recipients, and developing and maintaining this infrastructure is complex. Businesses must also maintain data security and optimal system performance to avoid downtimes that impact timely payments.

As a result, organisations must have a dedicated technical department to maintain their mass payout system. This team has to monitor system performance and security, generate reports reflecting this data, respond to user technical issues, and ensure operational efficiency. 

Cost Transparency

Bank and FX fees for mass batch payments fluctuate, making predicting costs difficult. Organisations don’t have control over how much their transactions cost—expenditures are challenging to manage. In addition, the more payment parties involved in a business’s mass payment process, the more fees they have to pay, especially as organisations are making payments in multiple currencies, with exchange rates fluctuating in real-time.

To mitigate this barrier, organisations must prioritise mass payment solutions like Thunes that facilitate payouts at competitive FX rates. These solutions must offer complete visibility into transaction costs and give businesses real-time updates and predictions to help them keep their transaction expenses as low as possible. 

Compliance

Businesses must maintain compliance wherever they enable payouts. So, if they send payments to every country in the world, they need to comply with the regulations of each country. However, complying with international jurisdictions is exceptionally complex and exposes organisations to the risk of hefty fines and penalties.

Without experts to help businesses navigate the regulations in every country, organisations will find it challenging to maintain them. Unfortunately, most organisations don’t have the resources to understand and adhere to the compliance requirements in every country. And with fraud methods getting ever more advanced, these processes are even more complex. 

In-country Knowledge

In addition to maintaining compliance in every country, organisations must also understand the market landscape in every region. This includes banking regulations, networks, payout schemes, fraud infrastructure, and consumer preferences. Most organisations can’t configure unique payout systems in every country. 

Instead, they either have to implement a one-size-fits-all approach, risk making mistakes in some regions of operation, or rely on a payout provider like Thunes to provide them with in-country knowledge. 

Best Practices for Streamlining Global Mass Payouts 

Here are the top strategies to implement to overcome the challenges of adopting global mass payouts. 

Automate Global Mass Payouts

Organisations should automate their processes to simplify mass cross-border payments. It’s best to find a mass payout solution that can achieve this, streamlining payouts across the globe. Manually handling these payments is tedious and exposes businesses to costly manual errors. Depending on the volume of payouts, companies also risk delayed payments, jeopardising their relationships with recipients.

For example, customers receiving untimely refunds would negatively impact an organisation’s credibility. Likewise, if suppliers don’t receive their payouts on time, this can create inefficiencies in supply chain management. Automated mass payout software like Thunes mitigates these problems. Businesses can focus their resources on optimising critical areas of operations, such as supplier relationships, customer support and data security. 

Maintain Compliance

Regulatory compliance is crucial in handling mass payouts. Organisations that fail to maintain strict compliance may experience expensive fines and penalties. For instance, the US Federal Reserve fined a multinational bank $186 million for ongoing transaction monitoring and sanctions compliance violations. A few years prior, the same bank received a $99 million fine for the same penalties. 

Organisations are not exempt from these penalties. To avoid facing these fines and infringing on regulations for data management, anti-money laundering, etc., businesses must work with a mass payout platform to maintain compliance with country-specific laws. 

Develop a Robust Security Infrastructure

With the average data breach costing $4.88 million, organisations must implement robust security measures to protect sensitive financial data. When processing mass international payments, businesses must have strict rules to process and protect their and recipients’ information. 

Compromised data can lead to compliance penalties and negatively impact organisations’ reputations, in addition to the cost of data breaches.

Ultimately, organisations must use a mass payment solution like Thunes that monitors their security infrastructure, detects suspicious activity and deploys remediation techniques to avoid security breaches. 

Plan Around Currency Fluctuations 

Fluctuations in currency exchange rates can make it difficult to precisely predict transaction fees during the mass payout process. That’s why staying ahead of the FX market is imperative. Businesses must use this analysis to prepare for a surge in costs. This approach means they are disabled by extreme FX increases. Instead, they can manage their budget to accommodate FX trends. 

Thunes offers competitive FX transaction fees and transparent currency conversions, helping businesses send global payouts at affordable rates. 

Industry-Specific Applications of Global Mass Payouts

Businesses rely on these transactions for vendor payouts, customer refunds, and affiliate marketing, among other applications.

Vendor Payouts Through Global Payout Platforms

One of the most common use cases for global payments is vendor payouts. Companies that work with multiple international suppliers and vendors must find a way to streamline these payments to ensure they get the products they need on time. 

Mass payout systems allow organisations to develop relationships with vendors abroad, giving them the opportunity and flexibility to get better or more affordable resources. 

Customer Refunds

E-commerce businesses often have to process refunds – at least 30% of all products purchased online are returned. Companies must ensure they can refund global customers as quickly and effortlessly as possible. 

A payout provider like Thunes can automate and streamline these refunds and offer more insight and data to improve payment reconciliation, making these processes more manageable for their internal teams.  

Affiliate Commissions via Mass Payout Solutions

Organisations that have global affiliate campaigns often have to pay these professionals. 

Cross-border payments make this possible, allowing companies to process timely payments and maintain positive relationships with their affiliates. 

Emerging Trends in Global Mass Payouts

With the rise of technology giving consumers access to businesses from around the world and the growing demand for remote workforce, global mass payouts are accelerating. In 2023, the global payouts market was valued at $2.64 trillion. This figure is projected to increase to  $4.78 trillion by 2029 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.5%. 

Digital wallets are the fastest-growing payment method, projected to reach $25 trillion in global transaction value by 2027. Consumers prefer transactions paid via digital wallets because they are quicker and more affordable. With mass payout solutions like Thunes, organisations can lean into this trend and pay to wallets worldwide.

Another key trend is AI. Generative AI simplifies global payouts, making them much more accessible for businesses to adopt and manage. 43% of organisations say generative AI will become a critical tool in their company’s fraud detection for international transactions. 

How to Choose a Global Payout Platform

Selecting the correct mass payment solution is key to successfully implementing global mass payouts. Here are the factors to consider when choosing a mass payout provider.

Ease of Use

Payout providers like Thunes are intuitive and easy to navigate. Through one single payout API, our dedicated Solutions Delivery team will guide you through every stage of the integration process. 

With this API, your business can access some of the fastest-growing markets worldwide. Our payout system facilitates real-time transactions, giving organisations complete visibility into their payouts with minimal manual intervention. 

But Thunes doesn’t just simplify payments for organisations. This mass payout solution allows customers worldwide to accept transfers using their preferred payment method. 

Security

A robust data security infrastructure is needed to facilitate secure mass payouts. 

Thunes monitors global transactions in real time, giving businesses complete control and visibility. These payments are traceable and provide instant payment confirmation, ensuring the correct transaction reaches the right recipient every time.

In addition, Thunes holds compliance licences in countries around the world, including:

• USA
• France
• EU
• UK
• Singapore
• Hong Kong

These compliance licences ensure Thunes can maintain compliance and data security standards for transactions between these regions.

Payment Network

Payment platforms worldwide aren’t interoperable. To overcome this challenge, companies need a mass payment system with an extensive payment partnership network. 

Thunes enables access to 120 mobile wallet platforms and over four million bank accounts, allowing organisations to send payouts compatible with most major payment platforms. 

Our payout network extends to:

• The Americas
• Europe
• Middle East
• North Africa
• Africa
• Asia Pacific
• South Pacific 

Case Studies: Global Payout Solutions in Action

These examples demonstrate how Thunes helped payment platforms establish successful global mass payouts.

PayQuicker

PayQuicker facilitates various payment use cases, including gig economies, accounts payable, affiliate marketplaces, on-demand workers, and sales programs. This company had to find a payout that supports payments to digital wallets, as most of its clients’ beneficiaries received money through this method. 

Thunes collaborated with PayQuicker to give them access to over 120 digital wallet providers worldwide.

Key Outcomes:

• Increased end-user experience and loyalty
• Streamlined immediate payouts
• Access to new revenue streams 

Flip

Flip is a payout platform that serves more than 10 million users with financial solutions, such as e-wallet top-ups, interbank transfers, and international payouts. To keep up with consumer demands, Flip had to find a way to improve payout experience and transaction quality and optimise payout speed. 

By integrating with Thunes, Flip could offer instant, reliable payouts at competitive rates.

Key Outcomes:

• Established payouts in 45 countries
• Between Q4 2021 and Q1 2022, Flip doubled its transfers

Optimising Your Global Payout Strategy with Thunes

Cross-border payments are rapidly growing, and organisations are relying on them to pay suppliers, vendors, partners and customers and establish a remote workforce.

However, companies must overcome many barriers, including the technical complexity of establishing mass payout systems, cost transparency and control, compliance, and in-country knowledge.

Choosing the right payout provider can simplify the payment process.

With Thunes, organisations can automate bulk payments worldwide with complete transparency. We offer the most competitive FX rates and give businesses access to an extensive network of payment providers in every region. 

Ready to expand your business internationally? Contact us today.