Most people think of cross-border payments as a technology problem. If you go deeper, you realise that it’s not. It’s a problem of compliance, corridor economics, and incentive design - all sitting under a fintech layer.

FX & Float is where I break down these mechanics and show you how they actually work.

Every week, I publish a Memo and an Operator Note.

The Memo is a teardown of a foundational payments mechanism - pricing, retention, GTM playbooks for new corridors, settlement, compliance. The Operator Note is my opinion, a contrarian take, or a mental model on something I find relevant to the business of cross-border payments. Both are shaped by my more than a decade of experience in payments and financial services organisations.

If you work in payments, you’ll relate to the issues I discuss. If you don’t, you’ll at least understand why your international transfer takes three days and costs 3%.

Written by Manas Mody.