4 days ago
SMBs Go Global: 3 Ways Bank Partnerships Can Transform The Small Business Payments Experience
By Jeff Koyen
America's small and medium-sized businesses ('SMBs') employ almost half (46%) of the U.S. workforce, about 59 million people,[1] and account for 43.5% of the country's GDP.[2] They're also firmly on the rebound as quarterly small business employment growth returns to pre-Covid levels.[3]
Meanwhile, SMBs are becoming more globalized and connected around the world. According to PCMI market research commissioned by Visa, nearly one-third of American SMBs make cross-border payments—international transactions that often help them manage suppliers, customers and operations.[4]
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Yet some major financial institutions fail to meet these clients' needs—especially when it comes to fast, efficient and cost-effective cross-border payments.
Forzley co-founded VEEM (which stands for 'Very Easy Exchange of Money') to solve these problems. In 2022, the San Francisco-based payments platform joined a number of other digital financial services platforms that are partnering with Visa Direct to remove friction from global payments.
So how can financial technology (fintech) innovators like VEEM close the gap between global payment expectations and real-world experiences? And how can that, in turn, help banks deliver new solutions for small businesses?
Below, explore three ways financial institutions can use emerging fintech to create a better banking experience for their SMB customers.
As every entrepreneur and executive knows, your business is only as strong as its balance sheet. For SMBs that rely on overseas suppliers and customers, managing cash flow can be a huge challenge. Due to the limitations of traditional banking, the process of getting paid and paying suppliers can take several days, even weeks.
That's not a problem for Fintechs, like VEEM, that connect to the Visa Direct network.
Without Visa Direct, payment platforms often rely on existing global banking infrastructure, such as SWIFT and correspondent banking, which do not meet the demands of most modern SMBs. Settling payments on traditional networks can take days.
Visa, meanwhile, provides day-after settlement, which allows clients and partners, and their SMB customers, to send funds more quickly to payees and beneficiaries.
Visa Direct also brings greater transparency to global payment processes, which was the case for VEEM.
With Visa Direct, SMB customers can instead know exactly where their money is—helping them make more informed decisions.
Visa Direct helps financial institutions to solidify account primacy by embedding real-time cross-border capabilities that keep SMBs transacting within their ecosystem—reducing outflows to other providers, improving future cross-sell opportunities.
The digital economy may be global, but currency exchange rates remind us that borders still exist. When sending and receiving payments, SMBs can find themselves at the mercy of exchange rates. Imagine sending $1,000 to an overseas supplier on Monday morning, only to learn it's worth $950 when the payment finally clears.
Real-time payments help solve this problem by reducing the settlement lifecycle. Visa Direct also offers its banking clients another tool: multi-currency accounts.
Traditional banking institutions, on the other hand, convert foreign currencies according to their own schedule. Clients have no control or visibility into the process, potentially leaving a lot of money on the exchange rate table.
For SMBs that regularly transact with the same overseas customers and suppliers, converting between currencies may not even be necessary. Using multi-currency accounts, they can hold funds in foreign currency and use these accounts to conduct their back-and-forth business.
While foreign exchange fluctuations are unavoidable, these types of tools allow SMBs to have more control and visibility. Visa Direct enables financial institutions to offer multi-currency solutions that increase deposits and generate new revenue streams while giving SMBs more flexibility and control—all within the bank's branded environment.
All too often, small and medium-sized organizations can feel ignored when their banks scale up to go after bigger enterprises. SMBs working across borders may feel this even more keenly with, for example, new fee schedules that benefit higher-volume clients.
In Meszaros' view, ignoring those SMB pain points is a mistake.
The issue may be one of perception: Modern small businesses extend far beyond the local grocery stores or mom-and-pop pharmacies that were once unlikely to expand beyond regional markets. Today's SMBs are comprised of startups, innovators, eager entrepreneurs and others seeking opportunities for growth.
When banks stop paying attention to the changing SMB landscape, they may—inadvertently or not—remove the features, functions and favorable fees that help SMBs compete in global markets.
When financial institutions overlook these evolving needs, they risk ceding ground to more agile fintechs that are actively courting SMBs with tailored, tech-forward offerings. The result? A gradual erosion of wallet share, weakened brand loyalty and a missed opportunity to grow long-term, high-value relationships with the next generation of business customers. Financial institutions that ignore small business needs may also find that their SMB customers start looking for other providers to fulfill them.
In the case of VEEM, Forzley embraces the SMB market as an enormous opportunity.
His company's partnership with Visa Direct, he adds, 'has been instrumental in making our vision a reality.'
By leveraging Visa Direct, financial institutions can differentiate in a competitive market by launching SMB-first solutions that deepen engagement, build loyalty and position themselves as an innovation partner.
*Actual funds availability depends on receiving financial institution and region.
[1] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 'Small businesses contributed 55 percent of the total net job creation from 2013 to 2023', May 2024.
[2] U.S. Small Business Administration, 'Frequently Asked Questions About Small Business, 2024', July 2024.
[3] U.S. Small Business Administration, 'Economic Bulletin, Fourth Quarter 2024', January 2025.
[4] Visa PCMI Payments & Commerce Market Intelligence, 'SMB Payments–Visa Direct Market Fit Analysis', July 2024.
