Expanding your business overseas sounds glamorous, but then you have to handle the money issues, and you understand that it’s a complex process.

Suddenly, that exciting new international market comes with banking intermediaries, currency conversions, payment delays, unfamiliar financial systems, and customers who prefer different ways of paying.

In this scenario, crypto can become more than an investment story for you.

If you’re a trader learning how to buy crypto, you will probably focus your attention on Bitcoin, Ethereum, or stablecoins as assets to add to your portfolio so you can hold or trade. But if you’re running a business, you are more interested in what happens after the digital assets enter the financial systems. Stablecoins in particular are being explored for cross-border payments, payroll, supplier payments, international commerce, and treasury management.

So, could crypto make expanding your business overseas easier?

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Cross-border payments are the obvious starting point

You probably know from research that when a company expands internationally, money suddenly has to travel further. A French company selling software to customers in the United States may need to receive dollars. A UK business could have suppliers from Asia. Traditionally, these transactions involve foreign-exchange conversions, banking relationships, different payment systems, and banks. You could rely on the same infrastructure, but the entire process isn’t particularly elegant.

But if you use stablecoins, you benefit from an alternative route that allows you to move value across blockchain networks without being restricted to traditional banking hours. Stablecoins have the potential to accelerate cross-border transparency, especially if your business is dealing with an inefficient international payment system.

Stablecoins could prove more useful for business expansion than volatile digital currencies

It’s important to distinguish between stablecoins and crypto when we’re talking about using digital currencies for business expansion. When most people hear the word crypto, they immediately think about names like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and their drastic price movements. But a crypto with a high potential to explode overnight might not necessarily be the best solution for a business. Let’s say that your business pays a supplier $50.000. You don’t want to end up paying them $5000 more or less when the transaction settles because the crypto market had a dramatic day.

Stablecoins might be the best solution for a company because they are designed specifically to reduce market volatility by tracking the value of a reference asset, which is often the US dollar or euro. This makes stablecoins considerably more practical for a business transaction. They are increasingly being used not only within crypto markets but also for treasury operations, remittances, payments, and business-to-business transactions.

You might find it easier to pay international suppliers with crypto

Expanding your business overseas often means that you need to build new supplier relationships. This could mean new consultants, software providers, manufacturers, logistics companies, marketing agencies, and maybe even freelancers. Sometimes the challenge isn’t finding a supplier but paying them efficiently. If you make traditional international transfers, you might have to deal with multiple financial institutions and currency conversions. Depending on the country where your collaborators are located and the currencies involved in the transactions, the settlement can be more expensive and slower.

But if you use stablecoins, you can reduce the number of intermediaries involved in these transactions and facilitate value movement across borders. Specialists highlight that stablecoins enable businesses expanding overseas to have faster settlements, programmability, and the potential reduction of intermediaries. However, this doesn’t mean you’ll have to pay all your suppliers in USDC. Only that it’s best to look up into the advantages you could have if you used stablecoins.

Crypto allows you to reach customers in more markets

International expansion implies more than paying collaborators abroad. It also implies getting paid by customers. When your business enters a new country, you need to provide the clients with a convenient way to pay; otherwise, they won’t purchase your products. The more friction they deal with at checkout, the more they’ll be tempted to switch to a competitor. Crypto can become an alternative payment option, especially for digitally native individuals and international buyers who are familiar with digital assets and most likely already hold them in their wallets.

Stablecoins are especially interesting when talking about payment solutions because they allow customers to make payments using a digital asset created to maintain a relatively stable value, while you can convert or settle the funds into your national currency.

Suppose you’re selling digital products globally, using crypto can be particularly useful because you can address customers overseas without building the payment infrastructure around your country’s banking system.

Crypto can be a valuable solution in markets with financial friction

Global expansion doesn’t happen evenly. Some countries might have efficient banking systems, but others might bring expensive currency conversion, limited access to international payment services, restrictions, or inflation concerns, so they will make it more challenging to move money internationally. This is one of the main reasons why you should consider adopting stablecoins when you plan to expand overseas, especially to emerging markets. Stablecoins’ use cases are expanding into cross-border payments and remittances, which could provide you with benefits such as increased speed, improved settlement efficiency, and higher competition. However, you should also be aware of the risks stablecoins introduce when there are no safeguards or regulations in place.

Crypto’s biggest advantage for your business might be speed

Time is money; every business runner knows it. When you’re dealing with international finance, you feel it more than ever because a payment might be initiated today and require multiple processing stages to reach your funds. This delays business. But when you count on blockchain-based transactions, you use a stablecoin infrastructure that operates continuously and allows value to settle much faster through supported payment corridors. Stablecoin payments can enable international settlements in minutes instead of days.

For your growing business, faster settlements translate into improved cash flow. And cash flow is one of those wonderfully unglamorous things that can determine whether an international expansion works.

Parting words

The thing to keep in mind about crypto and international business isn’t that it will replace traditional money. But that adopting a hybrid strategy could help you harvest the expansion benefits more easily.