I want to highlight a problem area that is well documented in forum posts all over the internet - the ability to take one payment and put it side by side on another payment platform.

I highlighted three examples in my previous post:

There is no way PayPal payment can land on bKash wallet in Bangladesh.

There is no way to load Boleto payments to a debit card in the Philippines.

There is no way a Dwolla payment could go to Venmo - no problem.

Companies are reluctant to expand into territories or join another payment system unless there is a business case for them. This is exactly where the business model of a payment gateway operator makes sense.

Think of a payment gateway as a financial router (I have to credit my good friend Yusuf Jan for this term as he coined it about 10+ years ago).

A financial router or gateway will enable the connection of two or more different payment systems that have no commercial intention to integrate. The business model of such a gateway is based on the power of aggregation. Take an example of freelancers in Pakistan or Bangladesh, there are 100,000 of them. online payment gateways for businessSince PayPal is not available in any of the countries, most of them have created PayPal accounts from outside those countries, problem? They can't cash out. There used to be a way to link your Payoneer card to PayPal, but that's no longer the case.

A classic example where a commercial payment gateway can make money. Bring both PayPal and Payoneer on board, share the AML/KYC risk, and then connect the two systems. Both are licensed entities, but now they don't talk to each other.