For those who don’t know, tell our readers about your role and how you’ve helped grow TerraPay?
When we founded TerraPay, we envisioned a world where moving money across borders is as effortless as using your mobile phone when you travel—seamless, instant and available wherever you are, regardless of where you contracted your mobile plan.
Inspired by the simplicity of how data moves almost at the speed of light, we set out to build a network that ensures money moves with the same speed and reliability, no matter the distance. This stemmed from my decades of experience in the telecom industry and that truly inspired the birth of TerraPay.
Along with my co-founders, Ani Sane (Chief Business Officer), Ram Sundaram (Chief Operations Officer) and Akbar Hussain (Chief Compliance Officer and General Counsel), we realised that moving money is more a business of compliance, than money itself.
Over the years, we’ve been able to support emerging African markets (very early in TerraPay’s journey) and establish a strong foundation in major European and Asian countries while also strengthening our presence across LATAM.
Today, we are a global money movement network, with 31 regulatory approvals and licences, and we operate in 145 receiving countries with a robust operation that is backed by solid tech.
A few early wins for us were to earn the trust of our investors, strategic partners like Visa and large global players in the financial services space. We work with the largest money transfer organisations, wallet providers and banks.
I strongly believe in the power of teamwork in bringing a vision to life. My focus, right from when I started the business, was to build a reliable, strong team.
What started with 36 team members in 2015 soon grew to a global team of 200 passionate, talented individuals during the COVID years. Today, we’re a team of 700+ people from 40+ nationalities speaking 50+ languages spanning five continents. An amazing journey for all of us.
Give us the latest from TerraPay. What have you been up to this year and what do you hope to achieve by 2025?
The world of payments and money movement has been undergoing significant shifts over the past few years. These changes, coupled with our mission to simplify global money movement, have led to some exciting developments at TerraPay.
We’ve bolstered our presence, expanding our global coverage across countries. In fact, since the beginning of 2024, we’ve added more than 15 new countries to our network, which means our partners can now move money to 140+ countries.
This year has been significant in terms of regulatory milestones. Regulatory compliance has always been at the heart of everything we do at TerraPay and I'm proud to say we’ve further strengthened this commitment, obtaining new licences and approvals from governing and regulatory bodies including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, The Central Bank of Jordan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Also, this year we’ve recently collaborated with Swift to enable traditional financial institutions to meet the growing demand for convenient, instant payments.
This partnership gives traditional banks a strategic advantage, providing them direct access to our mobile wallet network of 2.4 billion wallets while benefitting from the same Swift connectivity they have today.
By 2026, around 60% of the world's population is predicted to use digital wallets. These numbers are hard to ignore; wallets are leading the future of global payments and, as an industry, I believe it’s important for us to continue to develop the conditions for wallets to play that role keeping security, compliance and the consumer at the centre of our efforts.
In August this year, we formed the Wallet Interoperability Council, together with five leading digital wallet providers, from across the globe. It aims to break down the cross-border barriers that restrict digital wallets, strengthening the global wallet ecosystem through collaborative action. This ties back to our vision for founding TerraPay.
The council will advise the creation of common operating models, protocols and messaging standards to facilitate cross-border money movement from wallets to wallets under the corresponding regulatory framework.
Walk us through TerraPay’s growth in the digital payments space
As a global money movement company, we’ve always been singularly focused on developing technology and building infrastructure that supports payment interoperability. The idea of interoperability played a key role in shaping our vision and what we do.
In making cross-border payments frictionless, we recognised there was an imbalance in how low-value payments were treated compared to high-value transactions. We saw this gap as an opportunity to make a difference while building a strong, agile, global payments infrastructure.
We look at small-value instant payments, allowing a different section of the world to be a part of financial inclusion.
Our focus has been to build an ecosystem where anyone can send a US$10 transaction (internationally) affordably, aligning with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of lowering the cost of remittances to 3%. And small-value payments meant we built a network that reaches the underbanked and underserved. The answer to this was wallets.
We’ve built a network of 2.4 billion wallets, 7.5 billion bank accounts and 12 billion cards. TerraPay's integration with more than 142 wallet providers allows for a robust infrastructure that supports a high volume of transactions for delivering local currency payouts to digital wallets in 50+ countries.
We’ve experienced a remarkable 53.7% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) in wallet transactions in the last year. This showcases the growth and adoption of digital wallet payouts and a clear opportunity, especially if the number of wallet users is going to double to 5.2 billion by 2028.
Over the years, we’ve established an ecosystem capable of assessing risk and accommodating diverse and evolving compliance standards across different markets. This is what has helped us build our trusted network of partners.
Today, our expertise in tech infrastructure and compliance, combined with global networks, will hopefully enrich the digital economy, making finance more accessible and safer for millions of individuals. Almost all (97%) of our transactions are delivered in under one minute and 96% in under 10 seconds.
As we expand, we’re adding new solutions while strengthening existing ones and building new partnerships that further our vision.
In 2025, how will the regional adoption rates of digital wallets differ? Can we expect to see more markets report an uptick in digital wallet use?
The trajectory is clear, according to Juniper Research – by 2026, digital wallet users will exceed 5.2 billion, with transaction values soaring by 13.2% to reach US$2.3tn. With 1.4 billion people globally lacking bank accounts, the potential for digital wallets to transform financial access is staggering.
Of course, the impact and evolution of digital wallets won’t be uniform. The APAC region currently leads digital wallet spending, contributing US$9.8tn (70% of the total), but one can see variances even within this region, with China and India leading the charge.
Across the world, digital wallets are expected to show impressive double-digit growth in Europe (11%), the Middle East and Africa (18%) and LATAM (23%) in the next five years.
While challenges remain, digital wallets have been able to simplify cross-border payments for businesses and individuals to a significant extent. In emerging markets, they have also proved to be an important tool for financial inclusion.
I’m certain that wallet usage will continue to increase, however, what I’m more excited about is how wallets evolve across different regions and what new innovations and partnerships they lead to.
TerraPay is at the forefront of this change, simplifying global money movement and addressing the gaps left by traditional financial infrastructures. Our interoperable network for real-time, cross-border payments connects to more than 10 billion endpoints, including 2.4 billion wallets.
As global instant payments are projected to reach US$58tn by 2028 (as per Juniper Research)—outpacing card transactions—this growth is largely fuelled by the adoption of Account-to-Account (A2A) wallets.
The future seems exciting with opportunities for collaboration that drives inclusive, affordable financial services for all, something we had set out to do.
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