Cross-border fintechs are still competing with banks, not each other: Skydo’s Movin Jain

India’s B2B cross-border payments market is attracting more fintech players, but it is too early for a price war, according to Skydo co-founder Movin Jain.

Bengaluru-based Skydo, which helps businesses receive payments from overseas clients and handles foreign exchange conversion, compliance and reconciliation, believes the bigger battle for new-age cross-border payment providers is still convincing exporters to move away from traditional banks.

“The bigger job is to convince them that a fintech can solve this problem because they believe only banks can solve it. So, as of now, we are not really competing against each other. We are mainly competing against banks,” he told ET AI in an interview.


His comments come as competition in cross-border payments widens. Skydo, Razorpay and Pine Labs are among fintech companies that have secured the Reserve Bank of India’s Payment Aggregator-Cross Border (PA-CB) authorisation, which allows regulated non-bank players to facilitate cross-border payments.

Also read: Skydo receives final RBI nod to operate as cross-border payment aggregator

Despite the growing number of players, Jain said their collective share of the market remains small.

“Nothing stops it from becoming a price war in the future. But that will only happen when all players start having significant market share. Today, as per my data, all of us combined have less than 1% to 2% of the market,” he said.

That leaves banks with a significant lead in the market. A Ken Research survey found that banks handle 62% of payment value among large enterprises and 71% among exporter SMEs. Specialist foreign exchange firms and fintechs account for only 12–22% of payments in the mid-market segment, where competition is strongest.

Despite a decade of fintech growth, most Indian businesses still rely on the bank where they hold an account for cross-border payments.

“Today the market is still very, very nascent. Most people in the market have not heard of any of us. It’s a category creation game,” Jain said.

Founded in 2022 by Jain, who previously headed payments product at PhonePe, and Srivatsan Sridhar, formerly head of business at Ola, Skydo aims to simplify processes that have traditionally required exporters to deal directly with banks.

Also read: Skydo enables Indian exporters to unlock over $150M in US tariff refunds

Earlier in August, the company said that it serves more than 50,000 businesses and has crossed $1 billion in annualised payment volume.

It had raised $10 million in a Series A funding round in December 2025led by Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, with Elevation Capital and Eximius Ventures also participating.

The company has also been expanding its regulatory footprint. Skydo has received approval to support domestic and outward payments and secured in-principle payment service provider authorisation from the International Financial Services Centres Authority in GIFT City.

AI could create a new class of Indian exporters

Jain believes the addressable market could expand further as artificial intelligence (AI) enables a new generation of smaller Indian businesses to sell services globally.

“I think it is creating a new class of exporters,” he said, arguing that AI is allowing individuals and small teams to deliver work that previously required much larger organisations.

Jain added that Skydo is seeing freelancers and small consulting firms use AI to expand the amount and range of work they can deliver. “If you are a small team, you can still produce a lot of work. Earlier, the work you produced was proportional to the number of humans you have,” he said.

The rise of such businesses, however, also puts the spotlight on the infrastructure they need to receive money from overseas clients. Jain said that banks often struggle to provide smaller exporters with a seamless experience because their servicing and distribution models are more people and branch-heavy.

Skydo currently charges a flat $19 fee on transactions of up to $2,000; however, Jain said the platform is aimed more at B2B payments with larger invoice sizes than very small transactions. “For a $100 payment, we are not the right platform for it. We are the right platform for a $5,000 payment,” he said.

Skydo’s website calculator shows that on a $5,000 payment, a customer would receive about Rs 4.69 lakh through its platform, compared with around Rs 4.61 lakh through Indian banks and Rs 4.29 lakh through PayPal, based on the exchange rate displayed at the time.

Also read: AI, RBI nod, Amazon tie-up: How Skydo is powering India’s small exporters

He added that the cost could fall if Skydo introduces other payment methods such as credit cards in the future.

Transparency as the biggest cross-border payment problem

For Jain, the biggest unresolved problem in cross-border payments is not speed, but transparency around pricing and foreign exchange rates.“I think transparency is the single biggest problem followed by cost and then speed,” he said.

Jain is set to speak on cross-border payments at the Global Fintech Fest on September 10 on a panel titled “Cross-Border Payments Reimagined: Speed, Cost and Transparency.”

Beyond improving the customer experience, Jain also wants the RBI to gradually give regulated fintechs a larger role in the cross-border payments ecosystem. One area he pointed to is the Rs 25 lakh transaction limit that currently applies to players such as Skydo.

“Over time, we would want the RBI to increase that limit,” he said. “We understand why that limit exists, but over time, as we win the trust of the regulator, hopefully, they can revisit and let us do more,” he added.

He also pointed to downstream regulatory processes that continue to depend heavily on banks. Jain gave the example of Export Data Processing and Monitoring System (EDPMS), which exporters use for regulatory reporting and reconciliation of export transactions.

“Opening that system up to fintechs like us will also help in creating ease of doing business because then there can be a digital experience for the exporter to get all of those things done. Today, they still have to run after banks and get it done,” he said.

Also read: Gift City turns growth lever for cross-border digital payment firms

Stablecoin promise 'slightly overstated'

On newer payment rails, Jain said the promise of stablecoins for Indian exporters is “slightly overstated”, arguing that they make more sense in economies where people prefer to hold dollars because of high inflation or sharp currency depreciation. For India, he sees more potential in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), though he said it would require cooperation between countries to make a meaningful difference to cross-border payments.

“In India, dollarisation does not make sense, and in fact, it goes against the national interest. So, here stablecoins are not a good idea from a geopolitical and economic point of view,” he said.