Emburse and TransferWise team up for cross-border reimbursements

In the race to break the stranglehold of bank-owned consortium SWIFT over cross-border payments, non-bank fintechs are teaming up with expense management platforms to automate payments, and reduce dependence on banks for domestic as well as international payment facilitation.

This week, Emburse, a California based accounts payable automation company has partnered with Transferwise which is a London based non-bank online payments company to launch Emburse Global Reimbursements which is backed by TransferWise.

Under Emburse Global Reimbursements, the company is touting on creating a faster, cheaper, automated way to reimburse employees out-of-pocket expenses, across multiple countries and currencies, the press release noted.

According to the press release, globally organizations have historically been forced to rely on SWIFT network to facilitate international payments from their corporate account to their employee account. This also requires incorporating numerous correspondent banks and taking longer to resolve but Emburse Global Reimbursements would use TransferWise’s own local account to exchange foreign currency. Under this, TransferWise would provide with low, transparent fees, and use the mid-market exchange rate to speed up the process.

“We’re partnering with Emburse so that businesses now get TransferWise’s speed and low price from directly within their expense system. This will help Emburse’s customers to save millions of dollars per year in international transfer fees while getting money reimbursed to employees much faster and more conveniently than before,” said Kristo Käärmann, co-founder and CEO at TransferWise.

Last month, Emburse partnered with Mastercard to develop an integrated solution for Mastercard corporate cardholders and Amazon Business customers while TransferWise has been in a slew of partnerships with Mastercard, Visa and Mambu this year.