What are B2B cross-border payments?
B2B cross-border payments refer to financial transactions between businesses located in different countries. These payments are essential for global trade, supply chain coordination, and operational growth across borders. As companies expand internationally, the ability to pay overseas suppliers, vendors, and service providers reliably and efficiently becomes mission-critical.
In recent years, global events such as the pandemic have accelerated the need for more agile, international supply chains, driving an increase in B2B cross-border payment volume. According to FXC Intelligence, trillions of dollars flow through global B2B transactions each year.
To support these payments, businesses often rely on a variety of methods, including wire transfers, ACH, SEPA, virtual cards, and international payment platforms. While these tools enable access to new markets and partners, they also introduce complexity, such as foreign exchange (FX) volatility, compliance risks, and processing delays.
How do B2B cross-border payments work?
B2B cross-border payments follow a structured but often complex process.
It typically begins with invoicing—detailing the terms of the transaction, such as payment due dates, currencies, taxes, and any applicable discounts. Unlike domestic payments, these invoices often require careful consideration of foreign exchange rates and cross-border taxation.
After the invoice is generated, businesses initiate the payment using front-end solutions like payment gateways or digital banking platforms. These systems help convert currencies and route the payment, but often come with high fees and longer settlement windows.
On the back end, intermediary banks and international networks like SWIFT or local clearinghouses facilitate the movement of funds. Some providers now use back-end networks designed for cross-border efficiency, minimizing delays and offering better tracking and transparency.
Modern AP platforms like Medius aim to simplify this multi-step process by integrating invoice management, FX management, and global payment execution into a single, automated workflow.
What do businesses have to consider when using international payments?
Expanding into international markets introduces a range of payment complexities that businesses must manage carefully. While cross-border payments unlock growth opportunities, companies must weigh key operational and financial factors that can impact cost, efficiency, and compliance.
Currency conversion & Foreign Exchange (FX) volatility
One of the biggest considerations in cross-border B2B payments is managing currency conversion. Exchange rates fluctuate frequently, and failing to account for this can result in overpayments, underpayments, or inconsistent supplier experiences. Businesses often rely on providers offering competitive FX rates or fixed-rate options to ensure cost predictability.
Intermediaries and banking infrastructure
Cross-border transactions often move through several intermediary banks before reaching the recipient. Each step introduces potential delays, added fees, and limited transparency. Partnering with a payment platform that leverages local banking rails or SWIFT alternatives can significantly reduce friction and costs.
Transaction fees and processing costs
Multiple stakeholders, banks, clearinghouses, and payment processors can assess fees throughout a transaction. These include FX markups, wire transfer charges, and intermediary bank deductions. Businesses should seek providers that offer transparent pricing and eliminate hidden fees where possible.
Regulatory compliance and taxation
Every cross-border payment must comply with the regulations and tax codes of both the sender’s and recipient’s countries. These requirements can vary by geography and industry, covering areas like KYC (Know Your Customer), anti-money laundering (AML), and data security. Compliance missteps can result in penalties or blocked transactions, making it essential to use platforms with built-in audit trails and risk management tools.
Common challenges with B2B
cross‑border payments
Despite the opportunity they present, cross-border B2B payments come with several operational and financial hurdles. These challenges can affect everything from transaction speed to total cost and regulatory exposure.
Below are the five most common challenges businesses face when managing international payments and how Medius helps address them.
1
Currency exchange volatility
Foreign exchange (FX) rates fluctuate continuously, making it difficult for businesses to forecast exact payment amounts. To account for these shifts, some payment providers use inflated daily rates, potentially leading to higher-than-necessary costs for payees. Without access to real-time or locked-in exchange rates, businesses risk inconsistent supplier experiences and financial inefficiencies.
How Medius helps: Medius Payments supports multiple global currencies with transparent, competitive exchange handling ensuring consistent, accurate payouts and avoiding inflated intermediary rates.
2
Regulatory compliance and legal risk
Transferring money across borders requires strict adherence to varying regulations, including Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), and local financial laws. Each country may have different documentation and compliance requirements, increasing the complexity and risk of delayed or blocked payments if not managed correctly.
How Medius helps: Built-in approval workflows and audit trails help ensure payment policies align with compliance standards. User-level access controls and fraud risk detection provide additional safeguards during international disbursements.
3
Taxes, fees, and hidden costs
Cross-border payments often incur multiple fees, currency conversion markups, intermediary bank charges, and wire processing costs. These layers of fees can add significant expense to routine transactions. Without transparent pricing and consolidated payment workflows, it's difficult to predict the true cost of doing business internationally.
How Medius helps: Medius avoids costly wire fees by routing international payments through a network of local bank accounts. This reduces reliance on intermediaries and provides cost predictability.
4
Fraud risk and data security
International payments are more susceptible to fraud due to longer transaction chains and less visibility across multiple jurisdictions. Businesses must ensure secure authorization processes and employ fraud detection protocols, especially when sensitive supplier data is involved.
How Medius helps: Medius’s secure digital platform protects sensitive financial data with password-protected portals, user-level permissions, and embedded fraud detection protocols.
5
Delays and inefficient processing
Each additional step in a global payment introduces potential bottlenecks. Manual invoice matching, dependency on intermediary banks, and lack of real-time payment tracking all contribute to slow processing times. These delays can harm supplier relationships and disrupt global supply chains.
How Medius helps: Medius automates invoice-to-pay workflows and supports Straight Through Payments, enabling faster processing, fewer manual steps, and real-time visibility across domestic and international transactions.
Managing tariff planning and payment costs
International B2B payments come with more than just bank and processing fees, they may involve tariffs, duties, VAT, or other regulatory charges that significantly impact cost forecasting and profitability. Businesses expanding into global markets must plan for these expenses to avoid budget overruns and compliance risks.
Cross-border payment platforms should offer visibility into all cost drivers, from exchange rates to bank surcharges to applicable tariffs. AP teams should be able to estimate total landed cost and align payment workflows with procurement and customs planning.
By streamlining global disbursements and integrating payment workflows with financial planning, businesses gain better control over end-to-end payment costs and ensure fewer surprises at settlement.
Cross-border invoice processing and payment efficiency
Cross-border transactions introduce layers of complexity into accounts payable processes, ranging from multi-currency payments and local VAT regulations to formatting requirements and compliance mandates. Inconsistent or non-compliant invoice data can lead to delayed approvals, late payments, and strained supplier relationships.
To streamline these processes, enterprises need AP automation solutions that validate country-specific invoice formats, ensure compliance with local tax rules, maintain full audit trails, and link invoice processing directly with payment execution.
Medius supports this through intelligent automation that captures, matches, and validates global invoices, applying local regulatory logic to each transaction. This accelerates approval cycles, enhances supplier satisfaction, and strengthens global working capital management.
What should businesses look for in a cross-border payments company?
Choosing the right cross-border payments provider can make or break your ability to scale globally. International transactions require more than just a mechanism to send funds they require agility, transparency, and built-in compliance.
Here are the six key features to prioritize when evaluating a B2B cross-border payments solution, along with how Medius delivers on each.
Manual processes slow down international transactions, increasing the likelihood of payment delays and compliance errors. Look for a platform that reduces human touchpoints and automates everything from invoice matching to batch execution.
How Medius helps: Medius automates the entire invoice-to-pay process, streamlining approvals and reducing exception handling across both domestic and cross-border transactions.
Vendors around the world have different payment preferences, some require wires, others prefer ACH, SEPA, or virtual cards. Supporting multiple methods and currencies ensures seamless global partnerships.
How Medius helps: Medius Payments supports ACH, SEPA, BACS, CHAPS, BankGiro, wires, checks, and virtual cards, giving finance teams flexibility and suppliers confidence in consistent, timely payments.
Cross-border transactions are subject to stringent tax and legal requirements, including KYC/AML checks and multi-country financial regulations. A robust solution should help mitigate compliance risk without adding complexity.
How Medius helps: Medius includes embedded approval rules, audit trails, and fraud risk detection to ensure that payments meet internal and external compliance standards.
Global payments must be secure by design. A strong platform offers role-based access controls, encryption, and secure authentication without compromising ease of use.
How Medius helps: Medius offers password-protected portals, granular user-level permissions, and policy-aligned fraud detection embedded directly into its platform.
Disconnected systems create data silos and rework. Your cross-border payments solution should integrate with your ERP or accounting systems to keep financial data centralized and accurate.
How Medius helps: Medius Connect offers pre-built ERP connectors and REST API support to ensure real-time data sharing between systems and full payment visibility.
Processing international payments individually creates inefficiencies. Look for a solution that supports mass payments, allowing batch approvals and execution.
How Medius helps: Medius' Straight Through Payments capability enables businesses to build and execute batch payments directly from within the platform, no middleware, bank uploads, or manual coordination needed.
Why use Medius for a B2B
cross-border payment solution?
The reasons for adopting Medius as your B2B cross-border
payment solution partner are well-defined in the section above.
Features
Each of the necessary features of an AP automation solution can be found in the suite of Medius software modules.
Automation
All your supplier payments, including international and domestic, are managed through one automated process. This improves the clunky, manual processes that lead to errors and the introduction of risk.
Payment Methods
Multiple payment methods like virtual credit cards, ACH, wire transfers, and electronic checks are supported. Our system simplifies the complexities of currency exchange so that you can contract with international partners worry-free.
Security
Strong security is a key feature of every Medius product. While our online portals are accessible from anywhere, that convenience doesn’t come at the cost of safety.
Systems are password-protected and feature individualized user authorization settings so that AP staff and admins have the access they need and limitations from what they don’t.
Integration
Medius Connect is a powerful integration connector allowing Medius to integrate seamlessly into your ERP using pre-built connectors to popular third-party systems.
Other integrations can also be built through REST APIs to allow systems to work together and keep data flowing in real-time.
Payment Options
Medius Payments supports multiple payment methods including ACH, SEPA, BACS, CHAPS, BankGiro, wire, checks, and virtual cards. This breadth, combined with multi-currency and international capabilities, gives finance departments a consistent and compliant way to pay any supplier.
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