SWIFT still moves the world’s money, but a new generation of providers is building faster, cheaper and more flexible infrastructure to compete for cross-border payment flows
SWIFT remains the backbone of global cross-border payments. In 2025, the network recorded double-digit traffic growth and set a new record of over 68 million messages exchanged in a single day.
It connects more than 11,500 institutions across 200 countries and territories, with 89% of payments reaching recipient banks within an hour. That reach, built over five decades, is not easily displaced.
But the economics of cross-border payments – high fees, correspondent banking chains, trapped liquidity – have created openings that a new generation of providers is moving to fill.
Below, Payment Expert spotlights five of them.
Airwallex
Founded: 2015
HQ: Singapore / San Francisco
CEO: Jack Zhang
Airwallex is a full-stack global payments and banking platform, built for businesses that operate across borders, and resent paying SWIFT wire fees to do so.
By late 2025, Airwallex had exceeded $1bn in annualised revenue and $235bn in annualised transaction volume. And in 2025 alone, the company estimates it saved customers over $1.2bn by routing cross-border payments over local rails instead of traditional SWIFT and wire networks.
A $330m Series G round lifted its valuation to $8bn. Airwallex holds payment licences across more than 60 jurisdictions and serves over 200,000 businesses globally – a customer base that has roughly doubled in two years.
CIPS
Founded: 2015
HQ: Shanghai
Operator: People’s Bank of China (PBoC)
China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) is the institutional challenger at the sovereign level – a renminbi-denominated clearing and settlement infrastructure built explicitly to reduce dependence on dollar-based correspondent networks.
By the end of 2025, CIPS had 193 direct and 1,573 indirect participants spanning 124 countries and regions, up from 19 direct participants at launch a decade earlier. In 2024, total annual volume through CIPS rose 43% to ¥175.49tn ($24.47tn), driven by a 24% increase to 8.2 million transactions, FXC Intelligence reported.
CIPS is not yet operationally independent of SWIFT – a significant share of its messaging still relies on SWIFT’s infrastructure – but its trajectory, and the geopolitical tailwinds behind RMB internationalisation, make it the most systemically significant alternative network being built today.
Payoneer
Founded: 2005
HQ: New York
CEO: John Caplan
Payoneer occupies a specific niche in the challenger landscape: cross-border payments for the digital economy’s working layer – freelancers, marketplace sellers, and SMBs in emerging markets who need reliable, low-cost access to global payment flows.
For the full year 2025, Payoneer processed $87.5bn in volume and crossed $1bn in annual revenue, up 8% year-on-year and the first time the company has broken that milestone. B2B revenue grew 28% in 2025, with card spend reaching $6.1bn.
In 2025, Payoneer also completed its acquisition of Easylink Payment, making it one of only three foreign firms licensed as a payment service provider in China – a regulatory foothold with significant long-term implications for cross-border RMB flows.
Ripple
Founded: 2012
HQ: San Francisco
CEO: Brad Garlinghouse
Ripple‘s proposition is settlement – replacing the pre-funded nostro accounts that correspondent banking requires with on-demand liquidity sourced via the XRP Ledger. Total Ripple Payments volume has surpassed $95bn, and in November 2025 the company announced a $500m strategic investment at a $40bn valuation, led by Fortress, Citadel Securities, Pantera Capital, and Galaxy Digital.
RippleNet counts more than 300 financial institutions across 55-plus countries. The company has also introduced RLUSD, its own dollar-backed stablecoin, as a settlement option alongside XRP – broadening its appeal to institutions that require price-stable assets for cross-border flows.
Wise
Founded: 2011
HQ: London
CEO: Kristo Käärmann
Wise has spent fifteen years slowly disintermediating the correspondent banking model. Rather than routing funds across chains of banks, it matches transactions in local currencies using a network of local accounts. In FY2025, Wise moved £145.2bn ($195.8bn) across borders for 15.6 million customers – a 23% increase year-on-year.
Underlying income reached £1.4bn for the year, with Wise delivering a 21% profit margin, above its stated sustainable target. Wise Platform, its B2B infrastructure product, has secured partnerships with Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered, positioning it as a wholesale alternative to traditional rails, not just a consumer remittance app.
If you are interested in featuring in Payment Expert’s Spotlight series, get in touch with the team today by emailing News Editor Louis Thompsett at [email protected], or Senior Media Sales Executive Annabel Selvadurai at [email protected].
