Marcelino Bellosta, Executive Chairman of Midi.
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Global payments are falling behind global work. In 2021, the G20 established a roadmap to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more transparent, with a 2027 deadline. Today, the group’s own regulators admit those targets are already slipping.
Only 30% of fast-payment systems are even interconnected, leaving global businesses running on outdated financial rails with long settlement windows and hidden fees. And this affects the livelihood of millions of talented professionals across the world who are now a critical pipeline for global remote work. While companies lean on digital tools to build borderless teams, the systems that deliver their paychecks remain stuck in the past.
If remote work is meant to unlock global talent, then modernizing cross-border financial infrastructure isn’t optional. It’s the last-mile problem and until it’s solved, remote work will always run on legacy rails.
The Last-Mile Remote Work Problem
Slack and Zoom made global collaboration easy, and cloud platforms have removed barriers to building distributed teams. Communication, workflows and hiring can scale, but the financial infrastructure underneath it all has never truly modernized.
International payments are still dominated by manual inputs and multi-step approvals. Companies collect invoices via email, validate banking details by hand, reconcile errors and set up each transfer one by one. Operational patterns that would feel familiar in 2005.
The strain and inefficiency grow with team size, and even when remote workers are recurring, the payment cycle rarely is. Finance teams rebuild the same steps each month and once funds are sent, they still need to confirm receipt, trace delays through intermediary banks, and explain unexpected FX deductions.
The core and simple issue is that most underlying rails are built on legacy infrastructure, which wasn’t built for global teams with high-volume cross-border payroll flows. International transfers still travel through long correspondent banking chains where each intermediary adds time, fees and potential failure points. Regulatory requirements, such as AML and KYC, differ across jurisdictions, forcing companies into manual compliance checks. Plus, many traditional providers embed profit inside the FX spread rather than in transparent fees, meaning employers and workers rarely know the true cost until after the transfer is complete.
All of these issues create a payment juxtaposition. Systems that let teams operate globally in seconds rely on financial infrastructure that settles earnings in days. For millions of skilled professionals, especially those across low- and middle-income countries, that delay is a barrier to participating in the global digital economy.
Why Outdated Rails Exclude Skilled Professionals
One of the most misunderstood parts of building global teams is the gap between how US employers think global payments work and how they function in reality. Many underestimate the real cost, as they assume international payouts behave like domestic transfers. But for many workers across the region, the experience is far more fragmented and unpredictable.
One core misconception is cost. Employers believe they’re covering costs on their end, while workers routinely lose meaningful portions of their pay to FX spreads, cash-out fees, and local bank charges. The World Bank puts the average cost of sending money internationally at 6.5%, with bank-based transfers in some corridors running above 14%. A percentage that can erase a day’s worth of income for some workers.
Furthermore, there is no unified cross-border instant payment equivalent, no Zelle-like interoperability, and no shared protocol that links US banks to regional real-time networks. Even Brazil’s Pix, one of the world’s most advanced domestic instant-payment systems, cannot connect directly to U.S. rails. A payment that appears to settle on the sender’s side can sit in review or move through multiple intermediaries before reaching the worker.
These frictions shape how remote workers participate in the global economy. Irregular arrival times make income appear unstable, limiting access to credit, loans, or mortgages. High cash-out and FX costs erode earnings in a way domestic workers never face. Since payments land inconsistently, many professionals show up in a banking system as ‘higher risk,’ despite earning in USD for reputable employers.
What many US companies don’t see is how directly these frictions impact retention. For remote professionals, payment reliability is one of the strongest signals of whether an employer can be trusted. When pay arrives late or short or requires navigating unexpected fees just to access funds, workers can start looking elsewhere.
The Global Freelance Client Payment Delay Report 2025 shows 63% of freelancers wait over 30 days for payment, and a majority cite these delays as their top source of financial stress. This suggests that payment friction, including FX-related deductions and cross-border banking delays, is a real risk factor when it comes to stability and retention.
The problem isn’t the digital tools companies use, but rather the payment architecture beneath them being built for domestic rather than global teams. Until these rails modernize, remote professionals will continue facing avoidable financial instability, and employers will continue losing talent to the friction the system creates.
How Modern Rails Could Rebuild Access, Productivity, and Inclusion
If outdated financial infrastructure has held remote talent back, modern rails offer the opposite: the chance to participate in the global economy on equal footing. Faster, transparent, and low-fee systems would narrow the gap between domestic and international workers and give remote professionals something they don’t experience often: reliable access to their earnings.
Predictability is what turns payment systems into inclusion engines. When workers know when income will arrive and how much will land, they can plan payments for bills, childcare, tuition and loan repayments with confidence and build a buffer for any uncertainty. That stability reduces financial stress, supports savings and investments, and gives workers the freedom to pursue higher-value global roles instead of hedging against cash-flow volatility. It also broadens access to financial services as lenders and insurers can evaluate predictable earning patterns instead of irregular international transfers.
From here modern rails can unlock upward mobility, as when payments arrive in full and on time, workers build credit histories, qualify for mortgages, and participate in long-term financial planning. A stable income stream positions talent as low risk, and not because their skills have changed but because the financial infrastructure can support them.
For employers, the benefits compound as low-friction payments strengthen trust, reduce admin and improve retention and staff reliability. When workers don’t have to worry about delays or unexpected deductions, remote roles feel as dependable as local employment, making those employers more attractive even when compensation levels are similar.
Modernizing cross-border pay isn’t something any single company can solve alone. It depends on financial institutions, regulators and technology providers working together to modernize the rails that support cross-border work. The priorities are black and white: better interoperability, clearer FX disclosure, and faster settlement pathways, as these determine whether international hiring feels seamless or strained. Businesses that start adapting to these shifts now by tightening their own processes and choosing partners that prioritize transparency and speed will have a far easier time attracting and keeping talent as cross-border standards continue to mature.
