Businesses overpay on cross-border payments, PayDo says

PayDo's analysis found that half of businesses overpay by up to 20% on cross-border payments, a gap it linked to fragmented payment arrangements.

The analysis covered several hundred business clients over the past 12 months and examined the total cost of moving money internationally. It measured that cost against what the same payment volume would cost on consolidated infrastructure with direct connections.

The findings point to a payment process in which charges are often spread across several stages rather than appearing in one place. Businesses can face intermediary and correspondent fees, foreign exchange spreads, extra reconciliation work, and the cost of delayed settlement when funds remain in transit.

That structure can make it harder for finance teams to identify the full cost of international transactions. The problem is not limited to headline pricing, because some costs stem from routing and administration rather than explicit transaction charges.

Fragmented systems

PayDo's data suggests that businesses trading internationally commonly manage between 10 and 20 separate payment provider relationships. Each relationship may involve its own contract, technical integration, compliance process, and reconciliation file.

Close to one in three businesses in its client base joined while using five or more providers for collections alone. That level of fragmentation increases both operational complexity and the difficulty of understanding total payment costs across markets and systems.

The analysis indicates that this complexity is shaping buying decisions, particularly in the technology sector. Roughly two in three technology businesses joining PayDo cited fragmentation, rather than pricing, as the main reason for consolidating providers.

The operational burden also extends into day-to-day finance work. PayDo estimated that moving from a fragmented payment stack to a single platform can cut a finance team's reconciliation workload by about 30% and shorten the monthly financial close.

Hidden costs

PayDo argues that the structure of international payments helps explain why fragmentation persists. Costs can appear small when viewed transaction by transaction, but they build over time across multiple providers and disconnected systems.

"The reason fragmentation persists is that no single bill shows you the total. You see a small fee here, a slightly worse rate there, a few extra days of float. Individually, they look like the cost of doing business. Add them up across a year and you're looking at real money, and a finance team buried in reconciliation instead of strategy," said Serhii Zakharov, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of PayDo.

PayDo combines acquiring, multi-currency accounts, Open Banking collections, payouts, and foreign exchange under a single contract and integration. It is a principal member of Visa and Mastercard and a direct member of SWIFT and SEPA, allowing it to route payments through its own infrastructure connections.

The business processes more than €5 billion annually. Its analysis suggests that, for many companies trading internationally, the decision to consolidate payment providers is being driven as much by operational demands as by direct pricing pressure.