Cross-border payments’ latest $1bn+ revenue players
Remitly and Corpay’s Corporate Payments segment surpassed $1bn in revenues in 2024, with Payoneer nearing the mark and expected to cross it in 2025. Back in June, Wise reported its second $1bn+ year in its FY 2024 results (year-end 31 March 2024, converted from GBP), after previously passing the milestone in FY 2023.
Other businesses in the cross-border payments space – Western Union, MoneyGram and PayPal to name just a few – have reported $1bn+ annual revenues for a long time. However, the solid growth of Payoneer, Remitly, Wise and Corpay in recent years speaks to some common themes in the market, though they are targeting different customer types.
In particular, these companies have made moves to diversify and capture share in new markets, including emerging markets where payments infrastructure is still fragmented or developing. For example, Remitly’s rest of world revenues (outside the US) grew 49% and accounted for 24% of total revenue in 2024, compared to just 7% in 2019. Meanwhile, Corpay has seen its quarterly share of non-US revenues rise, while at the same time Corporate Payments (which is Corpay’s main cross-border division) grew its share of the company’s overall revenues.
Alongside expansion, these companies are focused on growing customer numbers in a profitable way – particularly Payoneer through its strategy of targeting high-value customers and Remitly through its customer-centric marketing. Having said this, another common theme across these companies has been retaining and getting more value out of existing customers, whether that’s by adding new services (e.g. Wise Account, or Corpay’s multicurrency account for businesses) or making existing ones better (Remitly’s focus on reducing pricing and payment speeds).
Having said this, it is impossible to ignore the impact of interest income, particularly for Payoneer and Wise. These companies have launched products that enable the retention of customer funds and have seen interest income form a significant part of their revenues. A key challenge for these companies will be to continue to drive profitability in lower interest rate environments.
As challengers to banks continue to grow, there is still a massive market out there to capture for both consumer and business payments – but especially on the B2B side. If these companies can stay resilient and profitable as they scale, they could just be getting started.
How big is the global cross-border payments market?
