Payoneer Sees An Innovative Future For SMBs India's businesses particularly have the ingenuity, creativity, and the drive to make a mark on the global economy and that is why Payoneer here is making the investment and serving the customers

As new technologies and globalization reduce the importance of economies of scale in many activities, the potential bestowal of smaller businesses is stronger, with many of them being pioneers of ingenious solutions. The global pandemic has enervated the economies around the world, and the analysts forecasted that it will take years for a full recovery in certain regions. But amidst all this economic fluctuations, Payoneer, as a key player in the sector, has a different take.

In the payments and settlement sector, India maintains an exceptionally better position. It is considered to be a leader worldwide. But to remain consistently at this bright spot requires many more things. John Caplan, the co-CEO of Payoneer, believes India's innovation is extraordinary. He pointed out that the major reason behind this is the Digital India programme wherein money moves way faster in the country which consequently brought growth for exports in particular and there is also a substantial opportunity in cross-border trade.

"We are playing here because exports are really the lifeblood of the fastest growing global economies and for small businesses, in particular, cross-border small businesses grow faster than domestic-only small businesses globally," said Caplan, while stating the cyclical establishment procedures to where the ultimate growth of the sector leads

Based on the market analysis of the sector, India's fintech sector incorporates over 20 unicorns now. It is valued at $31 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow to $84 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 22 per cent.

Gaurav Shisodia, country head (India) at Payoneer, said, "A lot of these innovations are happening at the domestic level and not necessarily cross border level. In this scenario, we have established a network of over 191 countries, making these human seamless transfers fast, effectively fast in our heart of what we really want to build an enterprise-grade product for a reason."

Every business aspires to be there in the global platform and payment is one of the factors that need to be solved yet because it seems to be expensive. To reduce the gap of this affordability is what Payoneer aims at., in such a competitive field; the company is working to make it more cost efficient.

In a point of fact, global currencies are a very powerful thing for an entrepreneur here in India. But also, to uplift the SMBs inorder to reduce the gap of affordability, Caplan mentioned the services that Payoneer provides. In his words, "We have a trusted brand; we are a listed public company regulated globally. So, we are in a position to provide superior service to the SMBs around the world, whether they are in India or frankly in South America or other parts of the world, consistently the most successful SMBs choose us for trust, the quality of our network and the speed and efficiency.

When asked whether the company understood the needs and funding requirements of the SMBs from its working experience with Alibaba and also if there has been any change in the company's decision making and innovation based on being here for a while, Caplan responded that, "We are a customer-first company right. And some of the innovations that our team has put in place here in India have been the result of listening to our SMBs, whether it's the service that is here in India that is the result of the request of our customers."

He also added that India's businesses particularly have the ingenuity, creativity, and the drive to make a mark on the global economy and that is why Payoneer here is making the investment and serving the customers.

Diving more into India's role in this ecosystem, Shisodia also shared the experience where the learning from India helped in Payoneer's successful innovation and also explained about the Payoneer Pathshala, a program built to focus and study more about the ecommerce sector inorder to expand globally, at the time when Indians were not evolved as they are now in the ecommerce sector.

Caplan shared his insights regarding this as, "As per some research, it is found that 91 per cent of Indian sellers plan to expand their businesses globally, which is a remarkable number. Because 91 per cent means basically every single Indian seller wants to do the business cross border.

While sharing the Payoneer's foresights and the company's upcoming offers for SMBs, John Caplan said that the initial step is to educate and empower SMBs.

"The ability for us now is to gather groups of hundreds or thousands of small businesses together to help them understand the opportunity about cross border trade, to help them get distribution channels, to introduce them to ways to scale and grow their businesses. This is a real focus. We are here to serve SMEs and to help them grow," he added.