Customers of Costa Rica’s Banco Cathay can now make international pay-to-wallet payments thanks to a partnership between the Central American bank and fintech company Thunes.

As of today, anyone banking with Banco Cathay will be able to deposit money straight into the digital wallets of people located outside of Costa Rica.

This expansion in Banco Cathay’s cross-border payments capability is enabled through technology developed by Singapore-based Thunes.

Thunes has developed a pay-to-wallet product that allows Swift-connected banks to facilitate international payments in 80 currencies across more than 130 countries worldwide.

The capability, powered by Thunes’ SmartX Treasury System and Fortress Compliance Platform, supports over 320 payment methods. These include GCash, M-Pesa, Airtel, MTN, Orange, JazzCash, Easypaisa, AliPay and WeChat Pay.

Currently, over 7 billion digital wallets, stablecoin wallets and bank accounts - along with 15 billion payment cards - are connected to Thunes’ network.

Franklin Wang, commercial manager at Banco Cathay of Costa Rica, described this partnership with Thunes as a means of “enabling faster, simpler, and more accessible cross-border payments” for customers looking to pay into international mobile wallets.
He added: “We’re proud to bring this powerful capability to life.”

For Thunes, partnering with Banco Cathay on pay-to-wallet payments is a way of improving financial inclusion in Costa Rica.

Access to modern financial services has long been a big problem in Central American countries, with factors like high levels of poverty, a lack of financial literacy and poor financial services all to blame. In 2021, an estimated 30% of the population of Costa Rica did not possess a bank account.

Chloé Mayenobe, deputy CEO at Thunes, described the rollout of her company’s cross-border payments technology in Costa Rica as “important progress for financial inclusion”.

She added: “Thanks to our Pay-to-Wallet solution, any financial institution can utilise their existing secure Swift connectivity to access our Direct Global Network and send instant payments to billions of mobile wallets worldwide.

“Our alliance with Banco Cathay of Costa Rica proves what’s possible when traditional banking infrastructure meets next-generation payment rails.”

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