This week, I had the pleasure of breaking the news that former Global Head of Visa Direct Ruben Salazar has joined infrastructure player TerraPay as President in my Forbes column. It’s a key move for the company as it looks to build a path to significant scale.

My Forbes article saw me interview Ruben alongside TerraPay’s Co-Founders, CEO Ambar Sur and Chief Business Officer Ani Sane, to get a sense of the company’s plans moving forward. Here are some of the highlights:

• TerraPay is looking to scale its business beyond P2P payments, where it partners with companies including Western Union and MoneyGram, harnessing its existing network to address the wider cross-border payments industry. 
• This will significantly broaden its TAM: FXC Intelligence Market Sizing data shows consumer-to-consumer cross-border payments will have a TAM of $3.3tn in 2030, while the B2B cross-border payments market will reach $56.1tn.
• Its goal is to grow its transactions from “millions to billions”. By comparison, Visa Direct passed seven billion transactions by the end of 2023. 
• The company sees agnostic rails as key to addressing this and is looking to broaden to “four to five verticals”, including areas such as gig workers and entertainment.
• TerraPay expects to face increased regulatory scrutiny as it scales, but considers compliance foundational to the business, and is actively seeking to build on its c. 30 licences and regulatory approvals.
• Ruben joins having grown Visa Direct to operate at scale, and faces a similar challenge at TerraPay, although he sees the company as better-placed to support the growing demand for mobile wallets, particularly in emerging markets.

Read my full conversation with Ruben Salazar, Ambar Sur and Ani Sane

Daniel Webber

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Daniel is Founder and CEO at FXC Intelligence. Daniel is a leading influencer in the global payments space internationally. He is frequently invited to speak at industry conferences and provide insights and data on the sector. Daniel is widely quoted across the sector including in The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Daniel is also a contributor for Forbes.com. FXC Intelligence's weekly industry newsletter is the most widely read in the international payments market.