Cross-border payments have always been an issue for businesses, startups, and freelancers. As usual, legacy systems involve high transaction fees, unpredictable settlement times, and complex paperwork. However, there’s a new startup in India that is solving this problem with a technology-first solution. It simplifies how businesses and freelancers receive international payments.
Skydo is a cross-border payments platform that allows Indian exporters to collect payments from international customers in a seamless and transparent manner. It integrates with a wide network of financial institutions, both in India and abroad, including banks and fintech partners. This allows the platform to offer our customers the most efficient banking rails, guaranteed one-day settlements, and highly competitive FX rates.
Common Issues with Cross-Border Payments
Most businesses don’t have access to finance teams or compliance consultants. They often juggle product development, customer service, and paperwork on their own. For them, navigating international wire transfers, forex conversions, and documentation like FIRA and eBRCs can be time-consuming and frustrating.
How the System Works
The company partners with banks around the world to issue these local accounts. For example:
- U.S. payments go through Community Federal Savings Bank (New York)
- Canadian payments through Digital Commerce Bank
- Singapore payments via DBS Bank
- European payments through Barclays
- In India, funds are settled via HDFC Bank
This setup means clients make local payments, and exporters receive the amount in INR within 24-48 hours
Built with Modern Technology
Skydo helps Indian exporters receive payments from international clients, smoothly and transparently. To do this, it connects with a network of banks and fintech partners in India and abroad. This setup allows Skydo to offer fast settlements (often within a day), fair exchange rates, and reliable payment rails.
The system is built to handle uncertainty. If something breaks, say, a partner bank is delayed, Skydo is designed to recover without disrupting the customer. Payments are routed based on what’s most efficient for that particular corridor, and new routes can be added quickly as the business grows.
Since cross-border payments are heavily regulated, the team has built flexible compliance systems that can adapt to changes without causing friction. It also keeps an eye out for unusual patterns so problems can be spotted early, before they affect users.
Simple Pricing and No Hidden Charges
Skydo ensures transparency and charges a flat fee
- $19 for payments under $2,000
- $29 for payments up to $10,000
- For payments above USD 10,000 pay 0.3%
There are no hidden currency markups. The exchange rate shown is the mid-market rate you’d see on Google. This helps exporters get a fair value without losing money in conversion.
Using AI for Real-Time Monitoring and Risk Management
Just like everyone and everything, Skydo also leverages AI heavily across multiple functions, from onboarding and KYC to fraud detection and compliance. It uses machine learning models to analyze transaction behaviour, verify documents, and monitor for irregularities in real-time.
Furthermore, AI also helps match documents like shipping bills and payment references automatically, a task that otherwise leads to frequent mismatches and refund issues for GST or export incentives.
Real-World Examples
- A tech exporter in Ahmedabad avoided delays by using Skydo’s built-in invoice tools that flagged missing details in advance.
- Amazon sellers like Laxmi and Nakul shared how they stopped chasing banks for documents, payments and compliance paperwork that now arrive automatically.
Approved by Regulators
The company was amongst the first Indian fintechs to receive in-principle authorization from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as a Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA-CB). Recently, international fintechs such as PayPal and Wise have also received the PA-CB approval from RBI for cross-border transactions. It also has a Payment Service Provider (PSP) license from Amazon to handle export receipts for sellers on its global platform.
So, as more businesses go global, platforms like Skydo offer a glimpse into what modern cross-border payment infrastructure can look like: compliant, fast, and easy to use, without the usual hurdles.
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