Justine Assal MBE, President, Nextpay Global
When OWIT International President Noreen Burroughes Cesareo described the challenge facing women in global trade as an “architecture gap,” it resonated with something I see every week in my work with internationally active businesses across Florida and beyond.
The participation is there. The ambition is there. What too often isn’t there is the financial infrastructure to match.
For women-owned and women-led businesses operating across borders, the gap between being competitive and being able to sustain that competitiveness frequently comes down to something unglamorous: how money moves, at what cost, and how much certainty you have over the rate you’ll receive when it arrives.
The hidden cost that doesn’t show on an invoice
Most businesses — at every stage of growth — underestimate the cost of their international payments. Not because they’re inattentive, but because the biggest cost is deliberately invisible.
When a bank converts US dollars into British pounds, euros, or Brazilian reais, the exchange rate applied is typically two to four percentage points worse than the rate you’d see quoted on any financial news site. That difference — the spread — isn’t listed as a fee. It doesn’t appear as a line item. It’s simply the difference between what you sent and what arrived.
For a business moving $300,000 a year across currencies, a three percent spread represents $9,000 that quietly disappears. For a business at $1 million, that’s $30,000. These are real resources — the kind that fund a new hire, a trade mission, or the working capital needed to take on a larger contract.
Currency volatility is a trade risk, not just a finance problem
The past two years have reminded every internationally active business that exchange rates move, and they move in ways that forecasters consistently fail to predict. A contract priced in US dollars that looked profitable in January can be margin-negative by March if the dollar weakens against your cost base currency.
This isn’t an abstract concern for women entrepreneurs and businesses scaling into new markets. If you’re quoting in a buyer’s local currency to be competitive, you’re carrying FX exposure from the moment the proposal goes out. If you’re sourcing materials internationally, your cost base is moving even when your revenue appears stable.
The businesses that manage this well don’t necessarily have treasury departments. They use straightforward tools — forward contracts that lock in a rate for a future payment, multi-currency accounts that allow them to hold receipts in the currency they were earned rather than converting immediately — and they think about FX exposure the way they think about any other business risk: something to identify, quantify, and manage rather than absorb passively.
The Dollar is no longer King
International companies are increasingly diversifying away from invoicing exclusively in U.S. dollars, driven by a mix of currency risk management and geopolitical shifts. This movement is being driven by a growing share of energy and commodities being priced in non-dollar-denominated contracts, reflecting efforts by some exporters to reduce dollar dependence. Many firms are also pragmatically billing customers in local currencies to stay price-competitive abroad and avoid passing exchange-rate risk onto buyers, typically hedging the resulting exposure through forward contracts rather than abandoning the dollar altogether.
The banking barrier at market entry
For members who are supporting businesses expanding into the US market, or making that move themselves, the payments challenge arrives even earlier: before the first US transaction takes place.
US banking infrastructure is genuinely difficult to access for foreign-owned entities. Traditional banks require in-person account opening, extensive KYC documentation, and often evidence of existing US business activity — before any US business activity is possible. This circular problem delays market entry for months, with real commercial consequences.
One approach that consistently works is to onboard the home-country entity with a cross-border payments provider first, before the US entity is formed. This provides access to multi-currency accounts and the ability to transact internationally while the US incorporation, EIN application, and banking process runs in parallel. When the US entity is ready, it’s added to an existing account structure rather than starting from zero.
It’s a small sequencing change. The difference in timeline can be four to six weeks.
What the architecture question really means
OWIT members operate at every point in the global trade value chain — as exporters, importers, advisors, logistics providers, investors, and policymakers. In each of those roles, the financial plumbing that sits underneath international trade either enables scale or constrains it.
The question isn’t whether to engage with international payments infrastructure — every cross-border business already has, by default. The question is whether that infrastructure is working for you or simply extracting from you.
Getting a clear picture of your actual FX costs — what you’re paying versus what’s available in the market — takes less than an hour and consistently reveals savings that weren’t visible before. That hour is one of the highest-return investments a scaling business can make.
For any OWIT member who would find a conversation about their current payments setup useful, I’m always happy to connect. The goal isn’t a sales pitch — it’s the same thing we’re all here for: making sure women in international trade have the information and tools to compete on equal terms.
I recommend that you learn from others in a competent, international association which helps develop your vision and gain the skills you need to achieve your goal. At OWIT International, I have learnt practical thought leadership. Join OWIT events on: www.owit.org for insights and strategies on networking.
Author: Justine Assal MBE is an OWIT Tampa Bay member, the President of Nextpay Global, a Central Florida-based cross-border payments and foreign exchange risk management company backed by Corpay (NYSE: CPAY). Nextpay Global offers a free FX Review for businesses at any stage of their international growth. Learn more at nextpayglobal.com/consultation.
