Interview: Legacy rails slow, opaque in many emerging markets, says TransFi CEO

Cross-border payments are entering a period of rapid change.

Stablecoins, real-time settlement and new fintech infrastructure are challenging the slow, costly and opaque systems that have long defined international money movement.

Yet in many emerging markets, the core problem remains unresolved as faster settlement does not necessarily mean faster access to usable funds.

For businesses in emerging economies such as Nigeria, Bangladesh, India and Brazil, local liquidity, foreign-exchange constraints, payout coverage and regulatory fragmentation still determine whether money arrives in a form that can actually be used.

Against this backdrop, Invezz sat down with Raj Kamal, Founder and CEO of TransFi, to explore one of the most pressing questions in global payments: how to translate speed into real-world utility.

The conversation looks at licensing, partner networks, compliance, corridor risk and orchestration, while also examining how stablecoin-based infrastructure is reshaping the economics and operational realities of cross-border payments in harder-to-serve markets.

Edited excerpts:

Invezz: Faster settlement often dominates the conversation around cross-border payments, but if liquidity isn’t available on the receiving end, what actually changes for a business in places like Lagos or Dhaka?

Raj Kamal: Faster settlement is important, but it does not solve much if the receiving side still lacks liquidity.

In Nigeria, SMEs can still lose meaningful value to FX markups and delays, while in Bangladesh, large remittance flows continue to face banking friction that slows access to funds.

For small businesses in Dhaka or vendors in Lagos, the real issue is whether money can be converted into usable local currency in a predictable timeframe to pay suppliers or staff.

That is where stablecoin-based infrastructure, paired with broad local payout coverage, can make a practical difference by reducing costs, shortening settlement times, and turning faster transfers into actual, predictable & usable liquidity.

Invezz: Stablecoins are often promoted as enabling 24/7 settlement with transparent fees, but converting them into local fiat is still complicated in many emerging markets. Does that promise hold up once the last-mile off-ramp is factored in?

Raj Kamal: Yes, but only if the last mile is in place. Stablecoins can make settlement faster and fees more transparent, but that does not mean funds become instantly or predictably usable in local markets.

In emerging markets, the real constraint is still the off-ramp.

The promise of stablecoins holds only when blockchain rails are matched with dependable local liquidity and payout infrastructure, so funds can be converted into usable local fiat in a predictable timeframe.

Invezz: Nigeria, India, and Brazil all take very different regulatory approaches to foreign exchange and cross-border payments. Where is TransFi directly licensed and integrated locally, and where are you still relying on partner networks?

Raj Kamal: Transfi is registered as an MSB in Canada and the US and has multiple regulatory processes underway in markets such as Europe, Australia, the UAE, Indonesia & the Philippines.

While Nigeria, India and Brazil take different regulatory approaches, this typically applies to capital controls.

At TransFi, instead of holding licenses everywhere at once, we work with carefully selected local partner networks, who are licensed in their respective jurisdictions, and allow us to deliver payouts in local currency, into local accounts.

Where there is genuine consistency across every jurisdiction we operate in is on AML and financial crime standards.

Regardless of how different the local FX or licensing regime may be, TransFi is committed to operating to the highest market standard of compliance.

That's non-negotiable for us, and it's also what makes us a credible infrastructure partner for the businesses we serve.

Invezz: As correspondent banks quietly pull back from higher-risk corridors, at what point does that same corridor risk start shifting onto fintech platforms like yours?

Raj Kamal: Corridor risk starts shifting onto fintech platforms like TransFi when traditional banks pull back from low-volume or higher-risk emerging-market routes, and businesses begin relying on alternative infrastructure to move money.

At that stage, the fintech is no longer just routing payments; it is taking on compliance, liquidity, FX volatility, sanctions exposure, and settlement reliability.

That shift becomes much more pronounced once volumes move beyond pilot activity, and the platform starts serving as the main settlement layer in those corridors rather than a backup to legacy banking rails.

TransFi’s approach is to manage that risk by design rather than absorb it in the same way correspondent banks did.

Concurrently, compliance has to be built directly into the infrastructure through KYC, AML monitoring, fraud controls, and automated risk checks across markets.

The aim is not simply to inherit corridor risk, but to break it into more manageable layers through licensed partners, programmable infrastructure, and real-time visibility.

That said, as activity scales in de-risked corridors, continuous regulatory alignment and stronger risk controls become essential, because the challenge is not just moving funds faster, but doing so safely and reliably at volume.

Invezz: If a local payment partner fails mid-transaction or suddenly changes its KYC or compliance rules, how does your orchestration layer respond in real time? Furthermore, is orchestration truly a defensible moat, or is it something competitors can replicate?

Raj Kamal: If a local payment partner fails mid-transaction or changes its KYC or compliance rules, the orchestration layer should respond by detecting the issue immediately, reassessing the route against live performance and compliance conditions, and switching the payment to the next viable provider without manual intervention.

In practice, that means continuously monitoring transaction status, partner reliability, and rule changes, then either rerouting, re-screening, or pausing the transaction depending on what the failure is.

Viable & quality redundancies, real-time analytics and status updates matter here because they let all parties see where the payment stands without losing visibility during the switch.

As for defensibility, orchestration on its own is not a moat if it simply means basic multi-provider routing.

What makes it harder to replicate is the operating layer behind it: years of transaction data, strong partner coverage across markets, real-time compliance logic, and the ability to manage routing, liquidity, and settlement together rather than as separate functions.

So yes, competitors can build orchestration in theory, but replicating a system that has been trained on meaningful cross-border volume and tuned across multiple corridors is much harder in practice.

Invezz: You have worked as a consultant, an investor, and now an operator. What assumptions did you once have about emerging-market payments that turned out to be wrong once you started building a payments company?

Raj Kamal: There is always a difference between seeing a business from the eyes of an investor or a consultant, and seeing it from the eyes of a founder & operator.

Many assumptions that you had are overturned, and there are many surprises. For me, two things stood out.

First, I had always thought of cross-border payments as an opportunity to primarily flow from the developed world to emerging markets, and the other way round.

As we built TransFi, it became obvious that there were other flows that were as big and needed as much solutioning.

We found LatAm-to-Asia, South Asia-to-China, Africa-to-China, Middle East-to-Asia - all big corridors, with similar challenges of unpredictable settlement timelines, high costs and poor user experience.

Second, stablecoins, in themselves, emerged as a destination for transfers.

Transactions were not just fiat-to-fiat on a stablecoin sandwich. Many flows were fiat-to-stablecoins and stablecoins-to-fiat.

There is an increasing number of employees & freelancers who want to be paid in stablecoins. And there are users & businesses who want to pay for goods & services in stablecoins, or stablecoin-backed wallets.

We hadn’t thought of these use cases when we started.

But today, as people in many geographies, especially ones where local currencies are volatile, see value in keeping their money in stablecoins, we expect more and more such use cases to emerge.

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