Fintechs on Course to Overtake Banks as Top SME Cross-Border Payment Provider by 2028

Fintechs on Course to Become Largest SME Cross-Border Payment Provider Category by 2028, Mastercard-Bain Report Finds

Nine in ten small and medium-sized businesses trading internationally plan to switch their primary cross-border payment provider within the next two years, according to a report published in September 2026 by Bain & Company for Mastercard. The findings, drawn from a survey of SMEs across 11 countries, point to a significant reordering of the competitive landscape in business payments before the end of the decade.

What the Report Shows

The Money in Motion report projects that the share of SMEs using a fintech as their main cross-border payment provider will rise from 30% in 2025 to 48% in 2028 — an 18-percentage-point increase over three years. Over the same period, the equivalent share held by banks is projected to fall from 42% to 28%, a decline of 14 percentage points.

The headline switching figure is striking: 91% of internationally active SMEs said they intend to change provider within two years, a finding corroborated across two independently read sources citing the report.

If the projected figures are realised, fintechs would account for nearly half of primary provider relationships among internationally active SMEs by 2028 — up from less than a third today.

A note on sourcing: The 48% fintech projection and the 28% bank projection are each drawn from a single read source — a republication of the Mastercard press release — and have not yet been confirmed through a second independently read source. They are reported here as projections attributed to the Money in Motion report, with that limitation noted. The 91% switching finding is corroborated by two sources.

Why This Matters

The scale of the projected shift is notable on its own terms. If the projected figures are realised and no other provider category exceeds 48%, fintechs would become the single largest primary-provider category in SME cross-border payments — a position currently held by banks, which the same report shows on a declining trajectory.

A 14-percentage-point decline in bank share over three years is a material movement by the standards of business payments, though readers should note that this characterisation reflects editorial interpretation and is not drawn from the Money in Motion report or any other document in the verified research package.

The survey's breadth — 11 countries — suggests the findings are not the product of a single regional dynamic, though the specific countries covered and the sample size within each have not been independently verified, as direct access to the primary Mastercard and Bain sources was unavailable at the time of publication.

Competitive Context

The 91% switching intention figure implies that the SME cross-border payments market is, at present, characterised by relatively low provider stickiness. Whether that translates into actual switching behaviour at the rate suggested by stated intentions remains to be seen; intention surveys in financial services do not always convert to equivalent action rates. Editors note that no behavioural or conversion data is available within the verified research package to qualify this point further.

The report does not, on the evidence available to this publication, make claims about pricing conditions, the role of cross-border mandates in anchoring adjacent financial services, or broader structural comparisons between SME and corporate payment markets. Any such framing would go beyond what the verified source material supports, and has accordingly been excluded from this article.

About the Report

Money in Motion was compiled by Bain & Company for Mastercard and published in September 2026. It is based on a survey of SMEs across 11 countries. Direct links to the Mastercard press release and the full report returned access errors at the time of research; the findings reported here are sourced from secondary republications at Business Money and Financial IT, both of which carried the Mastercard press release in full or near-full form.