The increasing use of blockchain in international payments and what this means for payment systems

• Cross-border payments are still slow, costly, and opaque because they rely on fragmented correspondent banking models.

• Blockchain improves settlement speed, availability, and transparency, but only when paired with compliant, well-orchestrated payment systems.

• Crypto and stablecoins are most often used behind the scenes for international settlement, not as customer-facing payment methods.

• Uncertainty around custody, compliance, and operational ownership remains the main barrier to wider adoption.

• Orchestration is what allows businesses to use blockchain where it adds value, while still supporting traditional rails and local payment methods.

• The future of international payments is multi-rail by default, making system flexibility more important than any single technology choice

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The goods ship immediately, however, the money doesn’t.

Instead, it moves slowly through correspondent banks, time zones, and batch cycles. By the time funds arrive, it’s Monday, sometimes later. Fees have been deducted along the way, FX (foreign exchange) rates have shifted, and no one can quite explain where the payment sat for two days.

This is still how many international payments work today.

Blockchain enters the conversation because global commerce now moves faster than the rails underneath it.

So, let’s talk about it…

International payments are complex by design. Traditional cross-border transfers rely on networks of correspondent banks, each performing checks, charging fees, and reconciling ledgers before passing funds along.

That model creates three persistent challenges:

• Speed: Settlement can take two to five days, longer if weekends or holidays intervene.
• Cost: Fees, FX spreads, and intermediary charges often add up to between 2% and 7%.
• Visibility: Senders rarely know where funds are, what fees remain, or exactly when they’ll arrive.

For merchants operating across markets, this friction affects cash flow, supplier relationships, payroll timing, and customer experience. Even card payments, while faster at checkout, still introduce cross-border fees and delayed settlement behind the scenes.

These limitations explain why new approaches to international payments are gaining attention, including blockchain.

At its simplest, blockchain replaces a chain of bilateral handoffs with a shared ledger. Instead of each institution maintaining its own isolated view of a transaction, participants reference the same record.

In cross-border payments, this can mean:

• Fewer intermediaries involved in settlement
• Payments that can clear at any time, not just during banking hours
• A single source of truth for transaction status

Importantly, blockchain is not replacing existing payment methods at checkout. Customers still pay using cards, wallets, or local payment methods. What changes is how value moves and settles behind the scenes, particularly between financial institutions and payment providers.

In practice, many blockchain-based payment flows use stablecoins (digital assets pegged to fiat currencies like USD or EUR) to move value across borders while limiting short-term currency volatility.

What blockchain changes (and what it doesn’t)

Blockchain can improve parts of the international payment flow, but it doesn’t remove the fundamentals of payments.

This distinction matters and it’s the most important thing to note here: Blockchain improves infrastructure, not outcomes by default. The benefits only materialize when integrated properly with existing payment systems.

Crypto is the most visible application of blockchain in payments, and often the most misunderstood, and in the context of this article, is also an important area to cover.

Go back to the London retailer paying a supplier in Vietnam. From the outside, nothing needs to change. The retailer doesn’t want to manage wallets, tokens, or private keys. They just want the money to arrive quickly, at a predictable cost, with clear confirmation that it’s settled.

This is where crypto and digital currencies tend to show up in practice.

Some businesses accept crypto directly from international customers. More often, crypto-based rails (particularly stablecoins) are used quietly in the background to move value across borders, without exposing customers or suppliers to digital assets at all. Stablecoins sit between traditional currencies and blockchain networks, helping limit short-term FX volatility while enabling faster settlement.

But if crypto can move money faster, why isn’t everyone using it already?

Aevi’s research into the crypto and digital currency knowledge gap shows that uncertainty around settlement, custody, and compliance remains a major barrier. Many organizations understand the potential benefits, but hesitate when it comes to operational ownership, regulatory responsibility, and security controls.

When those foundations are in place, however, crypto-based settlement becomes about outcomes, revealing real benefits for international payments...

Real benefits for businesses accepting international payments

When blockchain-based settlement works well, the impact shows up in practical ways:

Faster access to funds, improving working capital
Lower and more predictable costs, especially in high-volume corridors
Reduced reconciliation effort, thanks to shared transaction data
Greater flexibility, without opening bank accounts in every market

For example, a marketplace paying sellers across multiple countries may use stablecoins to settle funds quickly, then convert locally when needed. A retailer might receive international payments over the weekend and access cleared funds immediately, rather than waiting for banks to reopen.

These benefits matter most where volumes are high, margins are tight, and timing affects operations.

Challenges to wider adoption

Despite momentum, blockchain-based international payments face real constraints.

• Risk management: Stablecoins reduce volatility, but reserve transparency and de-pegging remain concerns.
• Compliance: Open networks require robust monitoring, analytics, and reporting.
• Interoperability: Multiple chains, standards, and on-/off-ramps add technical overhead.
• Scale and reliability: High-volume payment flows demand predictable performance and uptime.

These challenges explain why many organizations start with pilots, testing specific corridors or use cases before expanding.

Let’s go back to that London retailer paying a supplier in Vietnam.

From the retailer’s point of view, the requirement is simple: Pay the supplier quickly, at a predictable cost, with clear confirmation that the money has arrived.

What actually happens under the hood is far more complex.

That payment might start as a card transaction, a bank transfer, or a marketplace payout. It could settle via a traditional correspondent bank, a local clearing system, or a blockchain-based rail using stablecoins. It still needs FX, compliance checks, reporting, and reconciliation, and it needs to work whether it’s Friday afternoon in London or Saturday morning in Ho Chi Minh City.

This is where orchestration becomes the deciding factor.

Managing all of that directly would mean building and maintaining multiple integrations, wallets, compliance processes, and reconciliation flows (something few merchants want, or are equipped, to do).

Instead, orchestration sits between the business and the rails.

A well-orchestrated payment system decides how a payment moves. It can route transactions based on cost, speed, availability, or risk. It can switch between traditional and blockchain-based settlement without changing the checkout experience. And it can present the business with a single, consistent view of what’s happening, even when funds move across very different networks.

In the London-Vietnam example, orchestration is what allows the retailer to use a faster settlement rail where it makes sense, fall back to traditional routes where it doesn’t, and still see one confirmed outcome: the supplier has been paid.

The real shift, then, isn’t just new rails. It’s the growing importance of payment systems that can intelligently connect them.

What this means for the future of international payments (and you)

Cross-border payments are unlikely to move to a single model. Instead, they’re becoming multi-rail by default.

Blockchain-based settlement will continue to grow where it delivers clear value: faster liquidity, lower costs, and better visibility. At the same time, traditional rails and local payment methods will remain essential for reach and customer familiarity.

For businesses accepting international payments, the priority is building payment systems flexible enough to support what comes next.

Because in global commerce, the ability to adapt matters more than the rail you use today.

Thinking about how blockchain can accelerate cross-border payments while keeping your systems simple? Let’s talk about what orchestration could do for your international payments.