Introduction
For international businesses, having access to multiple payment providers does not necessarily mean having a resilient payments operation. A company can use several banks, processors, currencies and settlement routes while remaining heavily dependent on a single jurisdiction, counterparty or source of liquidity.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as fintech platforms consolidate more financial services into a single interface. SharPay, a payments platform serving international businesses and entrepreneurs, is positioning its infrastructure around this problem, bringing together European IBANs, merchant accounts, payment processing, payouts, cards and access to digital-asset services.
Ivan Kroshnyi, founder of SharPay and co-founder and chief executive of Gerchik & Co, argues that businesses need to assess the underlying architecture of their payment arrangements rather than simply counting the number of providers or payment methods available to them.
His perspective is shaped by more than a decade in financial trading, followed by experience in brokerage, fintech and international investment. He says those experiences highlighted recurring problems around liquidity, settlement, jurisdictional restrictions and access to usable funds.
Why Payment Diversification Does Not Always Equal Resilience
Payment diversification is often presented as a straightforward risk-management strategy. Using several providers can reduce dependence on a single institution, but the arrangement can still contain hidden concentrations.
For example, a business might have several payment processors but rely on the same jurisdiction for settlement. It could have multiple banking relationships while depending on one provider to convert or release funds. It could also maintain different payment methods that ultimately depend on the same underlying infrastructure.
SharPay’s Kroshnyi describes this as the difference between visible diversification and genuine resilience.
The distinction matters because payment failures can affect business operations directly. Delays in settlement can interfere with supplier payments, payroll, market expansion or access to revenue.
A resilient structure therefore requires businesses to understand how their payment routes are connected and where critical dependencies remain.
SharPay’s Approach to Cross-Border Payments
SharPay describes itself as a fintech platform designed to simplify cross-border money movement for businesses and entrepreneurs operating internationally.
Its offering combines several services within one ecosystem, including:
- European IBANs
- Merchant accounts
- Payment processing
- Payouts
- Business cards
- Access to digital-asset services
The company says its infrastructure is API-led, allowing businesses to connect payment and settlement services through integrations while incorporating compliance and risk controls into the platform.
The underlying objective, according to SharPay, is to reduce fragmentation for companies operating across multiple markets.
Instead of managing each financial service through a separate provider, businesses can potentially coordinate more of those functions through a unified infrastructure layer.
The Role of APIs in International Payment Infrastructure
APIs have become a core component of modern fintech infrastructure because they allow different financial systems to exchange data and initiate processes programmatically.
For international businesses, this can reduce manual intervention across payment, reconciliation and account-management workflows.
SharPay says it has expanded its API capabilities to support more complex business integrations. The company has also focused on connecting different payment and settlement routes.
However, integration alone does not eliminate operational risk.
A technically connected payment ecosystem can still be exposed to provider failures, regulatory restrictions, liquidity constraints or interruptions affecting a particular jurisdiction.
For that reason, API connectivity needs to be considered alongside the underlying financial architecture.
From Trading to Payments
Kroshnyi’s approach to payments is closely connected to his earlier career in financial trading.
He says more than a decade in trading shaped his focus on liquidity, execution and concentration risk. His subsequent involvement in brokerage infrastructure provided another perspective on the systems operating behind financial products.
As his business activities expanded internationally, he says payment-related problems became a recurring operational issue.
These included delayed settlements, disconnected providers, jurisdictional restrictions and difficulties converting received funds into money that businesses could immediately use.
According to Kroshnyi, those experiences contributed to the development of SharPay.
His career also includes involvement in a broader group of businesses spanning fintech, e-mobility, real estate and hospitality. He says operating across different sectors influenced his understanding of payments from the perspective of a business customer rather than solely as a financial-services provider.
Why Compliance and Risk Management Are Part of the Product
Fintech development often focuses heavily on customer-facing functionality, but payment infrastructure also depends on less visible systems involving compliance, risk controls and operational continuity.
SharPay says it has invested in its compliance architecture and resilience as it expands its payment infrastructure.
That reflects a broader issue for cross-border fintech. A payment service may involve multiple entities, each with a different responsibility for processing, safeguarding, settlement or access to funds.
The more fragmented the structure, the more important it becomes to establish who is responsible for each stage of a transaction.
A business evaluating a payment provider therefore needs to look beyond the interface and consider the infrastructure underneath it.
What Happens When a Payment Provider Fails?
Operational resilience is ultimately tested when something goes wrong.
A payment provider can become unavailable because of technical failures, regulatory intervention, liquidity constraints, compliance reviews or other operational disruptions. The consequences can extend beyond the provider itself if a business has no practical alternative route.
Kroshnyi argues that companies should examine questions such as:
- Which providers are critical to the payment flow?
- Where are funds held or settled?
- Which legal entity is responsible for each service?
- How dependent is the operation on a particular jurisdiction?
- What happens if one payment route becomes unavailable?
- How quickly can the business access usable funds through another route?
These questions move risk assessment away from the number of services offered and toward the dependencies connecting them.
Digital Assets and Traditional Payment Rails
Another area of development is the relationship between traditional payment infrastructure and regulated digital-asset services.
SharPay expects the distinction between conventional payment rails and digital-asset settlement to become less visible to end users. The company’s stated objective is to allow the underlying settlement mechanism to operate in the background while businesses maintain a consistent interface for moving, controlling and reconciling funds.
For businesses, the attraction is less about the technology itself than about the practical financial outcome: moving money, controlling approvals, reconciling transactions and accessing funds in a usable form.
However, digital-asset infrastructure introduces its own regulatory, custody, settlement and operational considerations. New technology does not remove the need to understand where responsibility and risk reside.
Regulation Is Increasing the Importance of Accountability
As fintech platforms incorporate more payment methods and digital-asset capabilities, accountability across the financial stack becomes increasingly important.
A single customer-facing platform may rely on banks, electronic money institutions, acquiring partners, card issuers, liquidity providers and digital-asset service providers.
When a transaction is delayed or a service becomes unavailable, the customer needs clarity about which entity is responsible and what alternative arrangements exist.
Regulatory frameworks such as the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regime are contributing to a more structured regulatory environment for crypto-asset services. But regulatory authorisation does not by itself eliminate operational or concentration risk.
For fintech companies, compliance therefore needs to be accompanied by transparent operational responsibilities and appropriate contingency planning.
The Case for Genuine Redundancy
The concept of redundancy is becoming increasingly relevant to payment infrastructure.
A company may appear to have several payment options but still depend on a common underlying provider or jurisdiction. Genuine redundancy requires alternative routes that can continue functioning if a critical component of the primary system fails.
That can involve diversification across providers, jurisdictions, settlement mechanisms and other infrastructure components.
The appropriate structure will differ according to the business, its markets and its transaction flows. But the underlying principle is consistent: resilience depends on how independent the alternatives actually are.
This also explains why SharPay says it measures its development through reliability, integration and practical infrastructure value rather than simply the number of products or markets added.
The Outlook for Cross-Border Fintech
The next phase of fintech competition is likely to focus increasingly on infrastructure rather than customer-facing features alone.
Businesses operating internationally need payment systems that can accommodate multiple currencies, jurisdictions and settlement mechanisms without creating unnecessary operational complexity.
At the same time, fintech providers face pressure to demonstrate that their infrastructure can withstand disruptions and that customers understand the responsibilities of the institutions supporting each service.
The growth of digital assets could add further payment and settlement options, but it also increases the importance of regulatory clarity, custody arrangements and operational controls.
For international businesses, the key question will increasingly be whether a payment platform is merely convenient or whether its underlying architecture can continue functioning when market and regulatory conditions become less favourable.
Conclusion
Cross-border payment infrastructure is becoming more sophisticated, but adding providers and payment methods does not automatically create resilience.
SharPay’s approach, as described by founder Ivan Kroshnyi, places greater emphasis on understanding dependencies across banks, processors, settlement routes and jurisdictions. His experience in trading and brokerage has shaped a focus on liquidity, concentration risk, execution and operational continuity.
As fintech platforms expand into increasingly complex payment ecosystems, businesses will need to assess not only what services a platform offers, but also who provides them, where the risks sit and what happens when one component fails.
The next measure of payment innovation may therefore be less about how many rails a platform can connect and more about how reliably the entire system operates under stress.
