Bharat in BetaForeign-exchange and reconciliation tools
Source
- Kae Capital, Cross-Border Fintech (opens in a new tab)Infrastructure layersPublished: 28 Feb 2023
The idea
Support cross-border transaction operations.
Why this is interesting
- The essay describes foreign exchange as solved through bulk buying and conversion, which favours larger players, and expects exchange rates to stop being a differentiator beyond a point. It notes that reconciliation is offered by some infrastructure providers and not others, depending on what their customers value.
- Read together, the source treats exchange rates as heading toward commodity and reconciliation as optional. That leaves reconciliation as the less contested part of this entry, but that is Bharat in Beta’s reading, not Kae’s. The figures in the original are not repeated here and are not treated as current.
Possible starting points
Reconciliation for multi-currency receivables
Match incoming cross-border payments, fees and conversions to invoices for a finance team that receives money in several currencies.
Exchange-rate transparency for small exporters
Show a business what it actually received against the quoted rate across providers, as a decision aid rather than a conversion service.
Questions to answer
- Is reconciliation painful enough that a finance team would pay for it separately from the payment provider?
- If exchange rates commoditise as the source expects, where would a new entrant’s margin come from?