Banks Caught Flat-Footed as Global Payroll Rides Innovation Wave

Borderless work requires borderless payments.

The rise of the contingent workforce — including freelancers, gig workers, remote teams and cross-border hires — is pushing companies, banks and FinTechs to rethink the infrastructure supporting global compensation.

“It’s a very interesting landscape today,” Eynat Guez, CEO and co-founder of Papaya Global, told PYMNTS.

There’s increasing demand for global payments, but on the other hand, everything related to the time, compliance, regulation and know your customer (KYC) has requirements that have only increased and intensified, she said.

That duality — soaring demand met with heightened regulatory complexity — is defining the next frontier of global finance.

The gig economy is no longer a fringe labor market. In the wake of COVID-19, digital transformation and widespread workforce decentralization, companies now routinely hire workers around the world — both employees and contractors.

But the systems supporting those hires haven’t kept pace.

A New Normal for Global Work

Traditional banking infrastructure often proves ill-equipped for real-time global transactions. In practice, this means people are sometimes left unpaid — or paid late — due to seemingly minor issues, like a missing apartment number in a Japanese bank field or a name that triggers a false positive on a sanctions list.

Banks and last-mile recipients face a lot of friction when it comes to receiving payments from overseas, Guez said. It’s often due to compliance roadblocks or outdated systems that weren’t built for today’s workforce models.

She was candid about the growing gap between FinTech innovation and banking rigidity.

“When everything goes smoothly … it’s fine,” she said. “But … [the moment] you need [support,] the process becomes slow, the SLA is [unclear, and there’s no transparency into when — or if — issues will be resolved].”

“[Today, it’s becoming] a competition between the banked and the unbanked world,” she added. People can now receive money in multiple apps — even on Papaya — “and they don’t necessarily need [a traditional bank account].”

At the same time, cross-border payroll is no longer just about moving money — it’s about navigating a constantly shifting regulatory landscape. Compliance isn’t a checkbox. It’s a moving target. Increasingly, it’s also a source of competitive differentiation.

“It’s not that [you map] requirements once and you’re done,” Guez said. “Things change overnight.”

Countries introduce new rules. Banks revise schemas. A platform needs to keep up.

Where traditional vendors struggle with local labor laws, tax rules or sanctions screening, Papaya’s approach combines automated infrastructure with deep compliance expertise, Guez said.

The company integrates artificial intelligence to streamline due diligence but also maintains 24/7 expert support to solve edge cases and exceptions — a hybrid model that reflects the realities of high-stakes, high-complexity global hiring.

Whether it’s Germany, Ghana or Guatemala, Papaya abstracts the local complexity so hiring and paying a global workforce feels as seamless as doing it domestically, she said.

From 5 Days to 5 Minutes: The Power of Automation

If compliance is the hurdle, automation is the enabler.

Global payroll used to take days — if not weeks. Onboarding, tax validation and payment processes were manual, slow and error-prone. Now, platforms like Papaya are shortening timelines from days to hours.

Papaya’s platform enables clients to onboard workers through self-service, calculate payroll and withhold taxes automatically based on local laws, and initiate cross-border payments — all with audit-ready transparency.

Still, Guez was careful not to oversell automation as a silver bullet. Payroll is still complex, she said. While automation is powerful, you still need people who understand the edge cases, the exceptions and the nuance.

Looking ahead, Guez said she sees risk and opportunity in what comes next: a financial world beyond fiat.

She said the question isn’t just about faster fiat payments, but how we all operate in a world where cryptocurrency and stablecoins are part of the flow — and how we ensure that global payouts remain secure, compliant and efficient.

“We no longer live in just one currency or one country,” Guez said. “We live in multiple [financial systems at once — and the infrastructure needs to reflect that reality].”

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