RBI’s Payment Aggregator Cross-Border framework brings cross-border collections into a regulated, fintech-driven layer. The next challenge for fintechs is to build infrastructure that reduces friction while earning long-term, credible trust.
When I travel through small towns or meet rooms full of exporters, I am often struck by the same contradiction.
India is moving goods, services and ideas across the world at an unprecedented speed. A founder can close a global deal over email in minutes, ship a product in days, and serve customers across continents from a laptop in India. Yet the money meant to come back can still take days to arrive, pass through multiple intermediaries, and leave the exporter unsure about the final amount.
Selling to the world has become faster. Getting paid by it still feels slower than it should.
For many exporters, this is a familiar problem. One founder told me she tracks international invoices on WhatsApp, forwards screenshots to her accountant, and still spends a week chasing banks for confirmations. Another said that an unexpected fee wiped out a fifth of her margin on a European order. These are everyday operating realities for thousands of Indian exporters.
This is happening at a time when India’s export story is becoming larger and more complex. Goods and services exports hit a record $863 billion in FY2025-26, with services alone contributing $421 billion, nearly half the total. The momentum has carried into this year, with exports for April-August 2026 up over 15% year-on-year. The shift within that number is even more important. Services are now a co-equal engine of exports. In August 2026 alone, services exports were estimated at $38.9 billion, alongside $43.8 billion in merchandise.
India is exporting code, design, consulting, AI services and digital products at scale, alongside textiles, engineering goods, auto components and other traditional categories. Global Capability Centres, digital-first businesses and specialist service firms are making India a serious cross-border services economy.
As this mix evolves, one point becomes clear. Export competitiveness will depend as much on how efficiently Indian businesses get paid as on what they sell.
Cross-border payments remain one of the least optimised parts of the trade lifecycle. MSMEs, which account for nearly 49% of India’s exports, feel this most sharply. Platforms such as Amazon Global Selling have enabled more than 2 lakh exporters from India. Domestically, systems like UPI have set global benchmarks for speed, trust and scale. Yet global settlement networks remain slower and more expensive than the domestic payment rails businesses have become used to.
The cost is financial and operational.
Currency conversion markups, SWIFT-based intermediary bank deductions and unclear charges can make international collections expensive and difficult to predict. Intermediary bank deductions alone can range from around $15 to $50 per transaction. In many cases, layered costs can push total transaction costs for exporters into the 1.5% to 4% range. On a $10,000 invoice, that can mean ₹20,000 to ₹30,000 lost before the money reaches the exporter.
For a large company, this may be absorbed as a cost of doing business. For a small exporter, it can affect pricing, working capital and margins. When a business does not know how much it will receive or when the money will arrive, every decision becomes harder. Pricing becomes guesswork. Cash flow becomes harder to manage. Scaling begins to feel riskier than it should.
One exporter described it simply: “We always expect surprises.”
That expectation is the problem.
The good news is that the regulatory and infrastructure landscape is beginning to change. The Reserve Bank of India’s Payment Aggregator Cross-Border framework brings cross-border collections into a regulated, fintech-driven layer. This reduces dependence on fragmented banking chains and creates the conditions for payments to be handled more transparently, with compliance built into the flow.
For exporters, this matters in practical ways. They can get better visibility into FX rates and fees. They can track collections more clearly. They can receive compliant documentation without repeatedly chasing multiple parties. They can collect money globally through workflows that are closer to how modern businesses already operate.
This also connects with the G20 priority of making cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more transparent, with a push to bring remittance costs below 3%.
Four shifts are now happening together.
First, transparency is becoming a baseline expectation. Exporters no longer want to discover charges after the payment arrives. They want to know the exchange rate, the fee, the expected arrival time and the final receivable upfront.
Second, compliance is moving into the infrastructure layer. Invoices, KYC, regulatory checks, purpose codes and documentation should not require weeks of manual back-and-forth. AI-driven systems can already reduce many of these checks from days to minutes, while improving accuracy and auditability.
Third, exporters are beginning to make better decisions with data. When they have clear information on fees, settlement timelines and receivables, they can price better, plan working capital better and negotiate with customers more confidently.
Fourth, payments are becoming embedded into the trade lifecycle. Collection should not feel like a painful final step after the sale is done. It should sit naturally within invoicing, reconciliation, compliance and accounting.
The broader goal is to align payment infrastructure with how exporters already operate. Many of them are running serious global businesses using simple tools such as PDFs, email, spreadsheets and WhatsApp. The job of fintech is to meet them there, simplify the workflow, and reduce the invisible work around every transaction.
At the same time, it is important to recognise why banks continue to dominate cross-border payments. They are trusted. That trust has been built over decades through regulation, risk controls, compliance discipline and institutional credibility.
Fintech cannot shortcut that trust. It has to earn it.
The challenge for fintechs is to build better infrastructure while also becoming credible long-term participants in the financial system. The PA-CB framework is important because it gives fintechs a regulated path to do this. It frames compliance as protection for customers, banks, regulators and the broader ecosystem.
To unlock India’s export potential, a few things need to fall into place.
Interoperability has to improve so exporters are not trapped in fragmented payment chains. Transparency has to become standard, especially around FX, charges and timelines. Compliance needs to become simpler for the customer without becoming weaker in the background. Access has to move beyond large metros, because the next wave of exporters will come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as much as from traditional business hubs.
India is at a rare inflection point. It has a fast-growing export economy, a globally respected digital payments ecosystem and a regulator actively shaping the future of finance. The building blocks are already in place.
The opportunity goes beyond faster payments and lower fees. At its core, this is about confidence.
When exporters have clarity on what they will receive, when they will receive it, and whether compliance will move smoothly, they operate differently. They price more confidently, take on larger customers, enter new markets and make bigger bets.
Today’s exporters are digitally native, ambitious and operating in markets that expect speed and transparency. They want to scale in Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and North America. They expect international payments to feel as predictable as local payments.
That will take time. Making cross-border payments as seamless as UPI will require coordination across regulation, identity, financial access, banking partnerships and global payment infrastructure. UPI feels effortless today because years of system-level work made it possible. The result, 24.07 billion transactions in September 2026 alone, after a record 24.51 billion in August, is unmatched globally.
A similar cross-border experience will need multilateral coordination. It cannot come from Indian ambition alone. It will need regulators, banks, fintechs, marketplaces and global institutions to work toward the same outcome: faster, cheaper, transparent and compliant movement of money across borders.
Indian exporters have already earned the world’s business. The next unlock is ensuring the world’s money reaches them with the same speed, clarity and trust.
The author is Co-Founder & CEO, Skydo. Views expressed are personal.