Letting wallets roam: building global interoperability in payments

During Sibos 2025, The Paypers sat down with Ambar Sur, Founder and CEO of TerraPay, to discuss the journey from enabling wallets to connect with each other to enabling wallets to interoperate across the wider payments ecosystem and across channels.

How do you define a digital wallet in today’s payments landscape?

A wallet can take different forms, but it generally consists of three elements: identity (such as IDs or loyalty cards), stored value (such as cash or mobile money), and pass-through value (such as debit or credit cards linked to a bank). For instance, Apple Pay is a pass-through wallet because the funds remain in the bank, whereas wallets in Africa, such as M-Pesa, are stored-value wallets that hold cash and are used daily. Revolut is also essentially a wallet with a bank at the back end. Overall, wallets are evolving into daily-use tools for payments, moving beyond being just an accessory to a bank account.

You often compare wallet interoperability to telecom roaming. Could you elaborate on this analogy?

Telecom roaming was once a premium service but has since become seamless. Today, you can use your phone anywhere in the world without giving it a second thought. We believe wallets should work in the same way. A user in Burkina Faso, Indonesia, or Peru should be able to use their wallet seamlessly across borders and payment instruments. That is the vision of the Wallet Interoperability Council: enabling wallets to ‘roam’. 

What is the Wallet Interoperability Council building to make this vision a reality?

The Council is focused on payment interoperability rather than just wallet-to-wallet transfers. The objective is to allow users to pay with their wallets globally, across banks, cards, and merchant acceptance points, without friction. This means enabling a traveller to pay for a hotel abroad with their wallet, transfer money into a local wallet while on holiday, or use a wallet directly at a point of sale. In short, we want wallets to become globally accepted as primary payment instruments.

How do banks fit into this ecosystem? Are wallets putting them under pressure?

Banks are not under pressure; they remain integral to the ecosystem. In fact, 80% of cross-border payments still flow through banks, while 20% go through money transfer operators such as Western Union or Wise. Rather than competing, banks and wallets are complementary.

What TerraPay is doing, including through our work with Swift, is enabling banks to send money directly to wallets, avoiding the need for consumers to withdraw cash and transfer it via third parties. Traditionally, this required complex API integrations, which are cumbersome for banks. By leveraging the Swift protocol, banks can utilise their existing infrastructure to connect seamlessly with wallets.

What opportunities does this create for banks?

Wallet usage is growing by about 30% annually, making wallets the fastest-growing payment instrument globally. By comparison, debit cards are in decline, and credit cards are facing increased challenges. Banks can leverage wallet connectivity to access new flows, particularly in areas such as remittances and SME payments. Here, speed and efficiency are critical, and wallet-based solutions can provide a real advantage.

Could you highlight some use cases beyond remittances?

The SME segment is particularly important. Small businesses frequently make low-value cross-border payments, for example, a retailer sourcing goods from China. In such cases, speed is essential. If payments settle quickly, SMEs can rotate capital faster, improving their ability to operate and grow. This is why many fintechs and initiatives, such as Swift’s SME-focused services, are targeting this segment.

Large enterprises have established banking relationships and rigid processes, but SMEs require faster, lower-value transactions. Wallet interoperability enables them to operate more efficiently and compete globally.

How do you view wallet adoption across regions, including developed markets like Europe?

Wallets are not limited to growth markets. Venmo in the US, Revolut in Europe, and M-Pesa in Africa are all wallets. Local wallets such as MobilePay in the Nordics are highly effective domestically, but they need the ability to ‘roam’ if their users wish to transact abroad. That is the missing link we are working to address.

What role do stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) play in your roadmap?

Stablecoins are particularly valuable because they reduce working capital requirements by shortening settlement times. Today, clearing a cross-border transaction can take days, which adds financing costs to balance sheets. If payments can be settled within minutes using stablecoins, costs fall significantly. We at TerraPay use stablecoins for treasury flows between our entities where regulations permit, though not for direct consumer payments. CBDCs may eventually offer similar benefits, but they are still in early development. Both innovations point toward a future of faster, lower-cost payments.

Looking ahead, what are the key priorities on your roadmap?

Our focus remains on interoperability – whether between wallets, between wallets and banks, or between wallets and merchants. As I explained above, we are also exploring the role of stablecoins* and CBDCs in reducing costs and accelerating settlement, particularly for treasury flows.

The focus is on making wallets truly ubiquitous. For small-value payments, especially at the bottom of the pyramid, wallets should be the primary instrument. Consumers should be able to walk into a restaurant or shop anywhere in the world and pay with their wallet, just as they do with cards today.

TerraPay is working across domestic, regional, and international interoperability to enable this vision. A major product launch is planned for November 2025, underscoring the company’s commitment to making wallets globally interoperable.

*Editor’s note: On 6 October 2025, TerraPay announced the launch of its stablecoin-powered payment solution. Read more here.

About Ambar Sur

Ambar Sur founded TerraPay in 2015 and serves as its CEO, leading the company’s global expansion across Africa, Europe, and Asia. With over 20 years of experience in telecom and mobile payments, including senior leadership roles at Comviva Technologies, he brings deep industry expertise and strategic vision. Under his leadership, TerraPay has been recognised by CNBC X Statista as World's Top Fintech Companies amongst other esteemed recognitions.

 

About TerraPay

TerraPay simplifies global money movement through one of the most expansive regulated cross-border payment networks. Connecting 3.7+ billion mobile wallets and 7.5+ billion bank accounts across 150+ countries, TerraPay enables instant, secure, and compliant transfers. Trusted by leading banks, fintechs, MTOs, and merchants, TerraPay drives financial inclusion worldwide, with headquarters in London and offices across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas.