The next payments opportunity is fewer unresolved transactions

Speed is only one part of payment quality

A payment can move quickly while leaving the merchant uncertain about its purpose, finality or reconciliation. For fintech businesses serving BRICS trade, the useful opportunity may be a clearer transaction lifecycle rather than another payment button. Merchants need to match receipts to orders, handle refunds, understand fees and resolve exceptions. Finance teams need an audit trail that survives partial payments, currency conversion and changes to customer details.

The BIS's 2025 analysis explores tokenisation and programmable financial infrastructure while emphasizing the foundations of trust in money. BIS monetary-system analysis. That is a policy and technology discussion, not evidence that any particular cross-border service is available or approved. The business framework below focuses on practical merchant operations.

Find the expensive exception

A seller receiving many small payments may spend substantial time identifying the associated orders. A wholesaler may receive a single transfer covering several invoices with deductions. A service company may collect deposits, milestones and final balances. Product discovery should examine actual exception cases and the work required to close them. A generic promise of seamless payments provides little guidance about which problem a new tool will solve.

The provider should map who can initiate, approve and reverse an action. Customer support staff may need to explain a payment without having authority to issue a refund. Finance staff may require dual approval above an internal threshold. Those permissions should be designed into the workflow. Convenience becomes risky when one account can change bank details, approve a payment and conceal the change.

A reconciliation-service scenario

Assume a merchant processes 5,000 monthly receipts and staff manually investigate 8 percent, or 400 transactions. If each investigation takes ten minutes, the workload is about 67 hours. A tool that reduces that workload by half could release roughly 33 hours monthly. These are hypothetical assumptions, not measured results or a promise of savings.

The commercial case depends on what happens to those hours and what the tool costs. Some savings may improve service capacity rather than reduce payroll. The provider should include integration, exception review and ongoing support. If automation incorrectly matches transactions, apparent efficiency can create accounting errors. A pilot should compare accurate completion and total effort, not only the number of records processed automatically.

Cross-border payments require full-cost visibility

Businesses should understand the sending amount, recipient amount, exchange rate, fees and expected timing before choosing a route. A low transfer fee can be offset by a less favourable conversion rate or intermediary charges. Providers should explain which figures are fixed and which may change. Current regulatory, banking and sanctions requirements need transaction-specific professional review; BRICS membership does not remove those obligations.

Local-currency settlement can be useful when it fits counterparties' cash flows, but it does not eliminate exchange-rate exposure automatically. A business receiving a currency it cannot readily use still faces conversion and liquidity questions. The payment product should help the customer identify those questions rather than imply that a new settlement label solves them. Treasury choices belong with authorized, qualified decision-makers.

Design failure states as carefully as success

A system should distinguish initiated, authorized, pending, completed, failed and reversed transactions according to the provider's actual semantics. It should prevent a retry from creating an unintended duplicate. Refunds should connect to the original payment and show whether the customer has actually received funds. A webhook or status notification needs verification and a controlled retry process.

• Measure receipts matched accurately to the correct commercial obligation.
• Track unresolved transaction age and the reason for each exception.
• Compare quoted fees and recipient amounts with actual outcomes.
• Record duplicate-prevention events and unsuccessful refund attempts.
• Test access changes, approval limits and recovery after provider outages.

Build trust through accountable operations

Fintech partnerships can connect banks, payment providers, software firms and merchant platforms. Contracts should identify who holds funds, who answers complaints and who corrects records. A software integrator should remain clear about its role and avoid presenting itself as an authorized financial institution when it is not. Customers need a usable escalation path across the entire service chain.

The strongest opportunity is a product that makes money movement understandable and easier to reconcile. Expansion should follow evidence from real transaction cohorts, including refunds and failures. Novel infrastructure may eventually improve the options available, but merchants already have costly problems in today's workflows. Solving those problems with accurate records, transparent charges and controlled access is a practical foundation for a sustainable payments business.