Interview with Payful CEO Jonathan Ye at Qianfeng Awards: Cross-border Payments Are Shifting from 'Rate Competition' to 'Localization Depth Competition'

【Ebrun Original】Jonathan Ye, CEO of Payful. He holds an EMBA from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a master's degree from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He spent 15 years as a senior executive at Fortune 500 multinationals, with deep expertise in cross-border finance and global payments. He leads Payful's global payment network layout and emerging market expansion, and drives strategic partnerships with international financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and DBS Bank. Recently, during the 2026 Qianfeng Awards interview, Ebrun and Ebrun Think Tank held an in-depth discussion with Jonathan Ye around the theme of 'Modal Evolution Driven by AI and Going Global.'

Ebrun: This year's Qianfeng Awards takes 'Modal Evolution Driven by AI and Going Global' as its core theme. In the context of cross-border payments and fintech, how do you understand this round of industry modal evolution jointly driven by AI and globalization? What is Payful's positioning and business model?

Jonathan Ye: AI and globalization are reshaping cross-border payments from a 'channel business' into an 'intelligent infrastructure business.' In the past, cross-border payments competed on the number of channels; today, the competition is about compliance automation, intelligent fund routing, and real-time settlement. AI has turned multi-jurisdictional compliance review, anti-money laundering screening, and exchange rate risk management from manual, stacked processes into system capabilities. Globalization, meanwhile, requires payment networks to reach down into local markets. Payful's positioning is as a 'financial expert for global emerging markets,' using Hong Kong as an anchor to connect Chinese enterprises with global emerging markets, and building a regional, scenario-based, and governed financial infrastructure network. Our international business has been built over roughly 10 years. There are two core strategic pillars: first, license localization—we hold payment-related licenses and qualifications in multiple jurisdictions, our local collection network covers emerging markets such as Brazil and Mexico, and we support 30 currencies; second, full-chain closed-loop capability—in 2025 we became a Visa card-issuing member, enabling customers to complete 'collect, exchange, pay, and settle' on a single platform. Our business covers 100 countries and regions and serves 180,000 merchants. We build our business foundation around four types of customers and scenarios: cross-border e-commerce, foreign trade B2B, service trade, and corporate global spending. Payful Card provides multi-currency virtual cards and corporate expense management capabilities, covering card networks including Visa, Mastercard, and Diners Club as well as different payment scenarios.

Ebrun: Where is AI currently being deployed in core business processes?

Jonathan Ye: Four core business processes, and all are live—not proof-of-concept. First, merchant services. The Ask AI intelligent Q&A assistant launched in July 2026 is trained on Payful's official help center knowledge base and covers seven major business scenarios: e-commerce collection, foreign trade B2B, Payful Card, service trade, currency exchange, global payouts, and global acquiring. It provides 24/7 natural-language responses, turning merchants' 'I need to go find the answer' into 'AI tells me directly.' Second, risk control and compliance. Multi-jurisdictional KYC/AML review and transaction background screening are automated by our self-developed risk control system. Financial compliance is a domain with high tolerance costs—here AI is not an efficiency tool, but infrastructure that makes fund security traceable at a transaction scale of hundreds of billions. Third, fund routing. The system automatically matches the optimal path based on currency, amount, and destination, turning scheduling that previously relied on manual experience into real-time algorithmic decision-making. Fourth, business operations automation. AutoFlow, launched in the same period, supports merchants in using a single natural-language instruction—'when, complete what task'—to automatically break it down into a trigger mechanism (When), execution conditions (If), and execution actions (Then), converting some payment and fund management operations into automated business operating workflows, achieving 'one instruction, autonomous global collection and payment.'

Ebrun: You mentioned that the competitiveness system is 'two-way digital intelligence': internally using AI to restructure services and operations, and externally becoming a payment partner to the AI industry. How should this be understood specifically?

Jonathan Ye: Internally, we use AI to restructure services and operations, handing high-frequency, labor-intensive processes to systems. Externally, we are becoming a payment partner to the AI industry—AI-native companies such as AI short dramas and AI tools are already important customer groups, using Payful Card for global payments and expense management. The moat of this system is not the model itself, but the density of scenario data: whoever's rules engine has been tested by more real transactions and compliance practices will have more reliable agents.

Ebrun: In terms of overseas layout, which markets does Payful focus on? How many layers does localization have?

Jonathan Ye: We focus on three major emerging markets—Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa—while also covering mature markets such as North America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea. The common characteristics of emerging markets are: fast e-commerce growth but weak payment infrastructure, small currencies, fragmented clearing systems, and large differences in regulatory rules. Localization adjustments mainly have three layers: first, qualification localization—obtaining local payment qualifications in different jurisdictions to ensure compliance comes first; second, channel localization—connecting local collection in six Latin American countries and supporting local mainstream payment methods, so local buyers can pay in local currency and merchants are exempt from intermediary bank fees; third, partnership localization—deep cooperation with global financial infrastructure players such as Africa's Flutterwave, South Korea's GME, and DBS Bank, leveraging local partners' networks and cultural understanding for rapid implementation. Currently the company has multiple offices globally, an international business team of about 200 people, and business coverage across 100 countries and regions.

Ebrun (New): You mentioned cooperation with global partners such as Flutterwave, GME, and DBS Bank. Why is this more effective than building everything yourself?

Jonathan Ye: Going global is not about copying domestic playbooks; it is about embedding into local financial and commercial ecosystems. Establishing deep cooperation with local banks, clearing networks, and e-commerce platforms, and leveraging partners' networks, qualifications, and cultural understanding for implementation, is far more efficient than building everything yourself. For local banks and clearing networks, we bring transaction increment from Chinese enterprises going global; for merchants, we provide an experience with no intermediary bank fees, fastest T+0 settlement, and unified multi-currency account management. Becoming a Visa card-issuing member in 2025 is also a practice of bringing global mainstream financial infrastructure into the daily operations of emerging market merchants.

Ebrun: In building a deep overseas value chain, what model has Payful formed?

Jonathan Ye: It can be summarized as 'license matrix + local collection and payment channels + full-chain closed loop.' The core capability is not a single channel, but the ability to simultaneously establish the fund inflow side (local collection accounts) and the outflow side (local payment channels) in each target market, and then improve fund turnover efficiency through a global fund allocation system, pushing cost and speed to the extreme. This capability chain is: multi-currency accounts → coverage of local collection and payment methods → foreign exchange → global payouts → corporate expense management → compliance and risk control. After an enterprise enters an emerging market, it does not need to separately stitch together banks, PSPs, FX, payouts, and card products; instead, through one combined capability set, it solves the problems of fund collection, exchange, payment, and management in cross-border operations.

Ebrun: During the overseas expansion process, what core support do AI and digital capabilities provide for cross-border business?

Jonathan Ye: Our AI practice is two-way: internally using AI to restructure services and operations, and externally providing payment infrastructure to the AI industry. Internally, AI capabilities have already moved from back-end risk control to front-end business scenarios. In July 2026, we successively launched two AI-native products: the Ask AI intelligent Q&A assistant and AutoFlow automated workflows. At the same time, internal processes such as risk control, operations, and product are also achieving systematic efficiency gains through AI. Externally, we are becoming a payment partner to the AI industry. AI-native companies such as AI short dramas and AI tools have become important customer groups; they use Payful Card to pay for overseas advertising, cloud services, and subscription fees. The open API also embeds collection, payment, exchange, and card capabilities into merchants' ERP and business systems, allowing payment data to directly drive business decisions. Our path is clear: first solve the highest-frequency pain points, then precipitate AI into a continuously operating intelligent fund management system—leave complexity to AI, and leave growth to merchants.

Ebrun: What are the biggest internal bottlenecks and external obstacles currently constraining enterprises' large-scale AI implementation and deep globalization expansion?

Jonathan Ye: The biggest internal bottleneck is the scarcity of composite talent—people who understand payment compliance, understand local markets, and can also command technical systems are scarce resources in any market. The biggest external obstacle is regulatory fragmentation. Emerging markets update regulatory rules quickly and requirements vary widely across markets; the same business model may require rebuilding the compliance architecture in different countries. In response to these two bottlenecks, we address them from both the system and discipline sides. Internally, we precipitate compliance and operations experience into system capabilities—risk control rules engines, multi-jurisdictional compliance knowledge bases, and standardized operating procedures—so that organizational capability does not depend on the personal experience of a few experts; at the same time, we adopt a 'headquarters experts + local teams' combination model. Externally, we treat 'compliance first' as an expansion discipline: before entering a market, obtain qualifications and build local partnerships first; better to be one step slower than to cross the line. Over the past decade, this discipline has instead become our acceleration—while the industry is still making up for compliance lessons, we have already built the channels.

Ebrun: Looking toward 2026 and the next two years, what key investment plans does Payful have? How do you expect the industry competitive landscape to change?

Jonathan Ye: We will focus investment in three directions: first, continue deepening local collection and payment networks in emerging markets, replicating the six-country Latin America model into more high-growth markets; second, deepen virtual card scenarios, extending from advertising payments to corporate expense management; third, large-scale application of AI capabilities, including continuous expansion of intelligent Q&A and automated workflows. Next, we will further involve AI in corporate fund management and payment business operating processes, continuously improving automation and intelligence levels. In terms of the competitive landscape, the industry will shift from 'rate competition' to 'localization depth competition.' Mature markets in Europe and the United States are already red oceans; increment lies in emerging markets, but the threshold in emerging markets is not price—it is licenses, clearing networks, and compliance systems. These cannot be achieved quickly through subsidies, and industry divergence will intensify markedly over the next two years.

Ebrun: If you were to give one core piece of advice to peer companies that have just started and hope to build both AI competitiveness and globalization capabilities, what would it be?

Jonathan Ye: First make compliance thorough in selected markets, then talk about scale. The temptation of globalization is that every market looks like an opportunity, but payments and finance are heavily regulated industries; licenses and compliance systems are the 1, while technology, product, and marketing are the 0s after it. At the same time, AI capability building should not start with 'building a large model,' but should start from the highest-frequency, most labor-intensive links in the business chain, letting AI solve real problems first, then talk about restructuring. Finally, make good use of ecosystems; do not fight alone. Globally leading financial infrastructure is not out of reach; the key is to find the point of value exchange between both sides.

As the annual bellwether for the TO B sector, the '2026 8th Ebrun Industrial Internet Annual Conference and First Industrial Agent Conference' will be held in Beijing on November 20, 2026. The theme is set as 'Modal Evolution Driven by AI and Going Global,' focusing on in-depth deliberation of frontier topics such as the implementation of industrial agents, value reconstruction of AI supply chains, data elements and the TOKEN economy, and new ecosystems for industrial going global. The conference will bring together academic authorities, benchmarks from central state-owned enterprises, industry leaders, investment institutions, and service ecosystem partners to gather core industry forces, deconstruct the paths of industrial digital-intelligent transformation, and share frontier practical experience. During the same period, the annual industrial internet report and benchmark cases will be released, and a decision-maker closed-door meeting and the 'Qianfeng Awards' ceremony will be held.

This article was first published on the official website of Ebrun.