The next battle in global payments may not be about building another financial rail. It may be about making the growing number of existing rails work together.

For years, innovation in payments was measured by speed: faster settlement, new networks, and alternatives to legacy systems. But as banks, fintech companies, and blockchain-based platforms have expanded the ways money can move, the challenge has shifted from creating new infrastructure to connecting what already exists. The stakes are considerable: global cross-border payment flows are measured in the trillions of dollars annually, and even marginal improvements in speed, cost, and reliability translate into meaningful economic value for businesses operating across borders.

That is the view of Lux Thiagarajah, Chief Commercial Officer at OpenPayd, a London-based financial infrastructure provider helping businesses integrate payments, accounts, and FX through APIs.

Thiagarajah brings a market perspective shaped by more than technology alone. Before moving into payments infrastructure, he spent years in foreign exchange trading and macro investing — experiences that shaped his focus on liquidity, settlement, and the mechanics behind global money movement.

In an interview with DailyCoin, Thiagarajah discusses where liquidity is concentrated today, how stablecoins are moving beyond trading into enterprise finance, and why the future of payments may belong to the companies that connect existing financial systems rather than those trying to replace them.

The Complexity Behind a Single Payment

Most businesses only see the payment instruction. Behind the scenes, far more is happening.

A typical cross-border payment passes through several stages before reaching the recipient. Funds are routed through banking networks, foreign exchange may be executed, compliance and sanctions checks take place, liquidity is sourced, and the payment is settled. Each stage may involve different systems, messaging standards, and counterparties.

Every additional intermediary introduces more time, cost, and operational complexity. That is why payments can still take days to settle in some corridors, despite businesses increasingly expecting money to move in real time. The persistence of that gap stands in sharp contrast to what domestic instant payment schemes have already demonstrated: systems like FedNow in the United States, SEPA Instant Credit Transfer in the eurozone, and India's UPI have shown that near-instant settlement is technically achievable at scale within a single jurisdiction.

Platforms like OpenPayd abstract that complexity. Rather than managing multiple banking relationships and payment rails, businesses access them through a single API. The infrastructure selects the most efficient route — whether that is a domestic payment scheme, SWIFT, or a blockchain rail — while the client experiences one seamless payment flow.

An Increasingly Connected Ecosystem

Global payments have moved beyond being purely bank-led. Today, they are an increasingly connected ecosystem of traditional banking infrastructure, domestic instant payment schemes, payment providers, and blockchain networks.

"Banks remain fundamental to the financial system and will continue to play that role," Thiagarajah said. "What has changed is the number of ways money can move, creating a new challenge: connecting those rails effectively."

Businesses do not want to think about which network is moving their money. They want payments to arrive quickly, securely, and cost-effectively. Thiagarajah believes the next phase of innovation will be driven less by creating new rails and more by the infrastructure that intelligently connects the ones already in place. This trend is unfolding alongside broader standards convergence, including the global adoption of ISO 20022 messaging, which is gradually creating a common language for payment data across networks that have historically operated in isolation.

Liquidity Across Three Pillars

Today, liquidity is managed across three pillars: banks, treasury teams, and infrastructure providers.

Banks provide the underlying balance sheet and access to currencies. Treasury teams decide where capital is held and how it is allocated. Infrastructure providers increasingly connect that liquidity across banks, payment networks, and blockchain ecosystems.

What is changing is how dynamically that liquidity can be managed. Rather than pre-funding accounts across multiple jurisdictions — a capital-intensive approach that ties up working capital — businesses increasingly want to access the right liquidity at the point it is needed and route each transaction through the most efficient settlement path.

The Real Challenge: Surrounding Complexity

The biggest challenge is not moving money — it is everything that surrounds it.

Businesses still contend with fragmented payment networks, multiple banking relationships, inconsistent regulatory requirements, limited visibility over payment status, and inefficient liquidity management. Expanding into a new market often means another integration, another provider, and another operational process. The regulatory dimension adds further weight: approaches differ markedly across jurisdictions, from the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which introduced comprehensive rules for stablecoin issuers and crypto-asset service providers, to varying licensing and compliance regimes across Asia and the Americas.

For many organisations, that complexity has become a bigger problem than settlement speed itself. The businesses that scale most successfully address it early, simplifying their financial infrastructure rather than continuing to add to it.

Stablecoins Moving Beyond Trading

Stablecoins have evolved well beyond their original trading use cases. Financial institutions and global businesses are increasingly using them to fund accounts, manage liquidity, settle cross-border transactions, and improve treasury operations. The shift has coincided with visible investment from major payment companies: Stripe agreed to acquire stablecoin payments platform Bridge in 2024, PayPal launched its own stablecoin PYUSD, and Visa has explored stablecoin-based settlement infrastructure.

"Their value is not that they're a new form of money," Thiagarajah explained. "They provide a more efficient settlement rail, particularly in corridors where traditional banking infrastructure remains slow, expensive, or restricted by cut-off times."

The biggest change, he noted, is simplicity. Instead of managing multiple banking relationships, payment providers, and regional integrations, businesses gain access to accounts, payments, FX, and digital assets through a single API. For enterprise clients, that means faster market expansion, quicker product launches, and significantly less operational complexity, while still benefiting from the resilience and regulatory strength of the underlying banking network.

A Unified Experience Over a Diverse Network

The underlying network will remain diverse. Different countries will continue to operate different payment systems, regulatory frameworks, and settlement networks. What will become unified is the experience businesses have when accessing them.

The competitive landscape is also changing. Banks, fintechs, infrastructure providers, and stablecoin networks are no longer simply competing to own individual rails. They are competing to become the trusted layer that connects them.

"The winners will be those that remove complexity rather than add to it," Thiagarajah concluded. "The future of global payments is not about replacing traditional finance with blockchain. It is about making both work together seamlessly."