When TerraPay launched in 2015, its very first transfer was just $13, from a hotel cleaner in Dubai to his family in Tanzania. That small payment set the tone for what the company has aimed to do ever since: build global payments infrastructure that treats every transaction like it matters.
TerraPay now connects over 155 countries and 3.7 billion digital wallets, working with major partners like Swift and M-Pesa. But the real story is in the infrastructure behind it: licensing, interoperability and a deep commitment to making cross-border payments work for everyone – not just the biggest players.
In this week’s Behind the Idea, we speak to Ani Sane, co-founder and chief business officer at TerraPay, about starting small, staying compliant and why the future of financial access lies in making wallets work together, not apart.
Introduce us to TerraPay
TerraPay is a global money movement company that simplifies global payments for people and businesses across geographies.
Our story began taking shape in early 2015 when we started the company, just a handful of us, working together to make the process of sending and receiving cross-border payments as easy as sending and receiving an SMS – anytime, anywhere, and at low cost
Ambar Sur, founder and CEO of TerraPay, and my fellow founders, Ram Sundaram and Akbar Hussain, and I set out to identify the gaps, challenges, and opportunities present in the world of cross-border payments and build payment infrastructure that supports interoperability across the spectrum.
We knew that increased digitisation was shifting the world of payments, but it became increasingly clear that cross-border transfers were still riddled with challenges – for some more than others. Not only were these payments time-consuming, complicated, and expensive but they also were largely inaccessible for those making small-value transactions. We decided we wanted to change that.
The first payment on our platform was $13! It was sent from Dubai to Tanzania, by a migrant worker who cleaned hotel rooms to support his family back home. I think, from day one, it was clear that we’re committed to ensuring that every payment that goes through TerraPay’s money movement network will be treated with the highest levels of efficiency, security, and respect 0 regardless of its value. Even today, we continue to be driven by this commitment.
Tell us more about your company and its offering
At the core of what we do is our scalable, global money movement network – built to empower our partners with real-time cross-border payments. We support over 70 currencies and offer tailored solutions across B2B, B2C, and P2P use cases, enabling broader reach, improved liquidity management, and the flexibility to adapt to diverse business models.
In line with our commitment to interoperability, we joined forces with leading digital wallet providers – including Airtel, bKash, M-Pesa and Nequi – to launch the Wallet Interoperability Council. As digital wallets continue to grow at a CAGR of 20 per cent through 2030 and account for more than 60 per cent of global e-commerce payments, interoperability isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a necessity. Our network is designed to simplify the complexities of the wallet ecosystem by offering a unified framework for integration, transaction processing, and settlement across global wallets.
We’re also building for the future. Our recent collaboration with Swift is a significant milestone, empowering member banks and financial institutions to send funds directly to digital wallets using their existing Swift infrastructure. It’s a major step forward in enabling banks to meet the rising demand for wallet-based solutions and stay ahead in a market where wallets are increasingly reshaping how money moves.
Having established our leadership in the remittance space, our focus is now on scaling our capabilities in business payments, continuing to innovate, partner, and lead the way in cross-border financial infrastructure.
What problem was your company set up to solve?
Our purpose is to simplify global money movement for all. This purpose is rooted in facilitating inclusion and interoperability. Over time, we have learnt that there are three key pillars of enabling this at scale: Building long-standing partnerships, focused on collaboration instead of competition, strengthening an infrastructure that supports diverse payment instruments and types and adhering to strong compliance and regulation standards in every market.
Since launch, how has your company evolved?
When we set out on this journey, we were a close-knit team of fewer than 20 – founders and early believers – driven by a shared vision. Today, that vision is carried forward by over 700 passionate individuals representing more than 40 nationalities, spread across 10 global offices spanning APAC, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Our growth hasn’t just been in scale, but in reach and impact. Over the past year alone, we’ve expanded our payout network to include new corridors in countries like Japan, Peru, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Georgia, New Zealand, Benin, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, and many more, taking our total reach to 155+ countries, including some of the most underserved regions of the world.
And yet, what anchors us is unchanged: our mission to accelerate financial inclusion. Wallets have been a powerful enabler in that mission. In the last year, 68 per cent of all transactions on our platform were wallet-based. We now proudly partner with 150+ wallet providers, connecting to 3.7 billion wallets worldwide.
What has been the biggest challenge or most ‘tricky moment’ to overcome?
This is interesting. So, one of the ‘trickiest’ things we have done and continue to do is building our compliance capabilities. In our industry, I’ve observed how regulatory compliance is viewed as a big challenge. At TerraPay, compliance has always been at the centre stage. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, compliance is not a hurdle but an enabler.
Right from the start, we knew that to be called a ‘global’ money movement company, we needed to go local. Which means, acquiring the right licences and regulatory approvals. Today, we have 31 of these and of course, this number continues to grow! Our recent acquisition of the MPI licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is a big step in our APAC expansion strategy.
The region is experiencing exponential growth in digital payments, driven by rising e-commerce, financial inclusion initiatives, and a fast-growing demand for wallets. We also expanded our presence in Europe, acquiring the EMI licence in Italy. With this licence, we’re now offering digital payment solutions, issuing virtual cards, and tapping into Europe’s digital payments market projected to reach a transaction value of $2.5trillion this year!
While each of these licensing frameworks is different from the other, and therefore tricky to navigate, they allow us to make money move faster while also ensuring compliance with regional and global regulations. We have also invested heavily in machine learning and deep data initiatives that enable us to boost data quality and extract insights to identify unusual transaction patterns, data integrity issues, and suspicious customer/client systems behaviour.
With our focus on compliance, we have successfully built an agile and scalable global payments network which means our partners across the world can leverage our infrastructure and solutions to facilitate frictionless, secure, instant, and fully compliant payments across borders.
What are your biggest achievements or ‘proudest moment’ so far?
Interoperability, collaboration, and inclusion have been at the centre of TerraPay’s journey. And it gives me great pride every time we bring these elements together through our initiatives. Launching the Wallet Interoperability Council with industry leaders Airtel, bKash, M-Pesa, Nequi, and Sama Money as the founding members, last year is such an initiative.
The Council is important for multiple reasons, for enabling wallet interconnectivity, advancing digital inclusion and redefining how people experience cross-border payments. Interoperability is a long-standing challenge for the world’s payment ecosystems, and with wallets, it’s no different. I don’t believe we’re going solve it overnight and I also don’t believe we’re going to solve it without the participation & contribution of wallet providers.
How would you describe the culture of your company?
There’s a motto that we’ve weaved into our day-to-day: Stay hungry, stay humble. All of us, from the leadership team to the newest intern, believe in this. That’s the culture we’ve built and continue to nurture – rooted in curiosity, with zero room for complacency.
What’s in store for the future?
The industry we are in and the kind of values that we as a company stand for, always has us asking: what’s next? What’s the biggest, seemingly impossible challenge that we can solve? What will help us simplify global money movement further?
While we continue to strengthen our current capabilities, a significant part of our future ambition lies in solving one of the most pressing challenges in global payments – wallet interoperability. The launch of the Wallet Interoperability Council is just the beginning. We see it evolving into a global forum that brings together wallet providers, banks, regulators, and fintechs to co-create a unified, seamless payment experience across borders.
As wallets become the primary financial interface for billions – especially in emerging markets – the lines between traditional banking and digital wallets will continue to blur. In the future, wallets won’t just complement banks; they’ll increasingly partner with them, serve as distribution channels, and in many cases, act as the first point of financial access for underserved populations.
Our recent collaboration with Swift is a powerful step in that direction – enabling banks and financial institutions in their network to send money directly to digital wallets using their existing Swift rails and integration. It’s a seamless bridge between the legacy infrastructure of global banking and the fast-evolving digital wallet ecosystem. And more importantly, it’s a signal of what’s to come: banks embracing the wallet opportunity, not as a threat, but as a way to stay relevant, reach new segments, and enable instant, inclusive cross-border payments.
In that proverbial crystal ball, I see TerraPay at the centre of this transformation – forging powerful partnerships, opening up new markets, and shaping a more cohesive, accessible, and interoperable global payment ecosystem. One where banks and wallets don’t compete – they converge, with TerraPay as the bridge between them.
