We are incredibly excited to join the next phase of XFlow’s journey with Anand Balaji, Ashwin Bhatnagar, and the amazing team they have built. XFlow are fundamentally changing the payments infrastructure landscape for how businesses send and receive money.
Global e-commerce enablement, and helping entrepreneurs, developers, and creators reach beyond their borders has been one Square Peg’s core investment focuses - having invested in companies such as Stripe and Airwallex. I have worked directly with Ashwin and Anand during their time together at Stripe, and have had a front row seat to their founder journey. We believe Anand and Ashwin have the vision to build the payments infrastructure required to unlock key global economic corridors. XFlow is well-positioned to take advantage of the growth in global trade, and can help enable other platforms, and fintech services.
What is XFlow doing?
XFlow is building a full-stack platform to simplify cross-border payments - starting with a focus on cross-border payments in India. While payments within India are supported through the UPI infrastructure built by the government, sending money to, and receiving money from, countries outside India, is currently an unsolved and acute problem for local merchants and freelancers.
XFlow has established a strong network of customers already using their full-stack payments platform to accept payments simply and effortlessly. These include companies such as WeWork, Inkle and iCliniq.
What is more exciting is that XFlow is beginning to enable other fintech platforms to leverage its cross border payment capabilities, creating incremental value to these platforms' users. We believe XFlow is not only building a great product, but it can also be one of those generational companies changing the game in fintech.
The cross-border payments problem XFlow sets out to solve
The issue of cross-border payments is often convoluted, with the estimated value of these transactions in India alone reaching an astonishing US$150 trillion, and experiencing continued growth. On top of this, according to the World Bank, India is on track to become the world’s 5th biggest economy, with millions of developers, small businesses, and contracted employees joining the Indian workforce. The problem for companies and organisations managing cross border payments is further exacerbated by reconciliation challenges, rate efficiency issues, processes for claiming tax advantages, and other compliance requirements.
Building a product that can solve this problem in a scalable way is not easy. Global companies such as PayPal, Wise and Stripe have all previously made various attempts to solve this challenge in India, but outcomes have been limited given local nuances around payment regulation. Closer to home, the current local players are very much focused on building the additional layers of the fintech stack on top of the government-supported UPI.
To date, none of the local or international providers has managed to create a seamless API and dashboard experience that can serve the needs of smaller or more innovative users.
Enter Anand and Ashwin, and the exceptional XFlow team
Anand and Ashwin, and the team they have put together have the right skills and ambition to build a great payments infrastructure company. They have been working together on and off for a decade, and together they helped build and expand Stripe in India.
We believe that these two ambitious founders will not only build one of the best fintech teams globally, but also can create, collaborate, and influence progress in the global cross-border payments landscape -- ingredients that are critical in building a payments infrastructure company.
What’s next for XFlow?
XFlow continues to build its product and is actively integrating with very exciting platforms. Of course, they are also growing their team and are hiring, so if you’re interested in joining this rockstar crew check out their open roles.
Welcome to the Square Peg family Team XFlow!