admin May 31, 2021

Driving Faster, More Frictionless Cross-Border Payments with Automated Reconciliation

Customers and merchants today expect that when they make a cross-border payment, the transaction will be as seamless and fast as when they make a domestic one. That means payments made in fractions of a second, with real-time credit confirmation.  

And those expectations are rising. Global cross-border trade has expanded dramatically in recent years and is expected to hit a compounded annual growth rate of 5% between 2018 and 2022 to reach US$156tn. As flows get bigger and cross-border payments become easier and more commonplace, it’s the businesses that deliver an ever-faster, ever-smoother customer experience that will position themselves as front-runners in the payments space. 

At Thunes, we’re always seeking ways to help our customers get ahead. We know that enhanced reconciliation processes are vital to ensure continued real-time payments when transaction volumes are growing more than ever. That’s why we’ve invested heavily in this area, improving our overall customer experience and payment processing time. 

Thunes enables real-time cross-border payments by building a global network of partnerships with various financial institutions, mobile operators and alternative payment services. Businesses can easily tap into this vast network using a single API connection. As with any financial organisation involving multiple parties, every single payment transaction must be reconciled in a timely manner to ensure smooth operations, compliance, identify fraud risks and maintain the quality of service for our customers and partners. 

For most SMEs, reconciliation is a manual task done by their back-office team. This remains an effective approach when there’s only a handful of parties involved. But how do you manage reconciliation when you have hundreds of partners with different payment methods, transaction formats, and data points, and millions of transactions? 

That was the challenge facing Thunes as we embarked on our path to scale. We needed a robust solution to manage immense complexity and soaring volumes while maintaining a real-time payments service. An upgraded process would also prevent putting pressure on the finance, operations and treasury teams, a highly inefficient arrangement that could lead to human error and demotivated staff. 

Following an extensive product development effort involving multiple stakeholders, the result is a best-in-class automated reconciliation product tailored exactly for Thunes’ unique requirements.

The new smart product automates the reconciliation process for millions of transactions, across our network of partners in over 100 countries, with varying payment methods, formats and data points, and it does the job quicker than ever before. Also, transaction discrepancies (if and when they arise) can now be caught much earlier and flagged in real time, then resolved using a simple built-in workflow process. 

The overall benefits are twofold. Thunes’ finance, operations and treasury teams can now focus on other business critical activities to serve you even better. Meanwhile, your business stays ahead of the curve in the evolving payments space, promising your customers the very best real-time payment experience. 

Interested to see how Thunes can help? Get in touch with our team today.