How Fintechs Are Quietly Taking Over Global Payments

Jessica Albright · 2026-09-29

There's a quiet revolution happening in global finance, and it's leaving traditional banks with a stark choice: adapt fast, or watch your customers walk away. We're talking about cross-border payments—the massive, $150 trillion-a-year system that once belonged entirely to big institutional banks. Now, agile fintechs and neobanks are stepping in, promising something better: faster, cheaper, and crystal-clear services. The stakes? They couldn't be higher. In a recent industry discussion, experts like Tim Forster from Finastra and Hugh Thomas from Javelin Strategy & Research dug into this pressure cooker. They explored why traditional banks might need strategic partners just to keep up in a market that's moving at lightning speed. ### The Old Way Is Fading Fast Let's be honest—the traditional correspondent banking model in the U.S. has been frustrating. It's slow. It's expensive. And from where you're sitting as a customer, it's pretty opaque. You send money and then... you wait. Meanwhile, technology initiatives like ISO 20022 have been pushing for change from within. And many big banks have been "de-risking," which is a fancy way of saying they're pulling back, offering fewer services. So, the ground was already shifting before fintechs even showed up. They just put the whole thing into overdrive. Fintechs came in offering something simple: cross-border services that actually work for people. They're faster. They're cheaper. And they treat you like a human, not an account number. "Fintechs are appealing to younger audiences," Forster noted. "I've seen stats saying 42% of Gen Z have used a fintech account for payments. Banks aren't used to that kind of competition." Here's the thing—these new customers don't have that old-school loyalty to one bank. They're shopping for the best deal, the lowest fees, and they expect their money to move in real time. That's exactly what fintechs are delivering. Hugh Thomas had a great point about how expectations have changed. "Ten years ago, I was pretty skeptical that consumer experience would drive B2B expectations," he admitted. "I've turned around on that. If I buy a hat on vacation, I see that transaction pop on my phone instantly. I see the cost in my own currency, almost in real time. Why can't my business dealings work the same way?" ### When Payments Cross Borders, Complexity Explodes The cracks in the old system really show when money has to travel across multiple countries. Take sending funds from the UK to Nigeria—a huge corridor for remittances and business payouts. It can involve three to five different intermediary banks. Your money hops from one to the next, each stop adding more time, more mystery, and more fees that eat into the final amount. And it's not just remittances. Global supply chains are shifting constantly. A company might source from Vietnam one week and Cambodia the next. Setting up formal banking relationships in each new market is incredibly complex and expensive. That's been the standard playbook for 30 or 40 years. But what do customers want now? It's simple: - Faster settlement - Total transparency - To see all costs upfront - No hidden intermediary fees - Plug-and-play capabilities that work globally Neobanks saw this gap and moved right in. Many started with just one simple service. Revolut, for example, began as a peer-to-peer payments app. Now, after serious investment and growth, they're a full-blown challenge to the legacy players. This demand for speed and clarity goes way beyond person-to-person payments. Think about gig workers, content creators, influencers—they all want their money now, not in 3-5 business days. Banks, with their older infrastructure, often struggle to deliver that immediacy. The landscape isn't just changing; it's being rewritten. The question for every business professional isn't *if* this shift will affect them, but *how soon* and *how deeply*. The tools for moving money globally are becoming consumer-grade in their simplicity and business-grade in their power. And that's a combination that's very hard to ignore.