Qashio Launches Global Pay: First-of-its-Kind Rewards for Cross-Border Business Payments

Qashio has introduced Global Pay, a cross-border payment solution that integrates a rewards-based model into international business transfers. By allowing companies to earn points on supplier payments, the platform aims to transform traditional overhead costs into value-generating activities, addressing long-standing inefficiencies in foreign exchange rates and settlement speeds for enterprises operating within the UAE.

What was announced

Qashio’s Global Pay is designed to integrate international supplier payments directly into the company’s existing spend management ecosystem. The primary differentiator of the product is the introduction of Qashio Points, which businesses earn on their cross-border transactions. These points can be redeemed across a network of more than 50 travel and hospitality brands, including major partners such as Emirates Skywards, Accor, and IHG.

The product targets several common friction points in international trade by offering competitive foreign exchange (FX) rates displayed upfront, zero fixed transfer fees, and faster settlement times compared to traditional banking channels. Users can manage the entire lifecycle of a payment within the Qashio platform, from funding a Global Pay balance via a company account to verifying beneficiaries and uploading invoices. The system allows finance teams to submit payments through existing approval workflows, ensuring that international transfers maintain the same level of control as domestic spending.

The launch is positioned against a backdrop of significant capital movement in the Middle East. In 2025, the UAE ranked as the world’s second-largest source of remittances, trailing only the United States, with outflows reaching approximately AED 188.8 billion. Global Pay aims to capture a portion of this volume by offering finance teams end-to-end visibility and the ability to download transaction records in PDF or CSV formats for simplified reconciliation. This expansion allows international supplier payments to sit alongside corporate cards, accounts payable, and business travel within a single financial environment.

"There is a huge growth in payments in and out of the country, so it is natural that the UAE has become a centre of innovation by fintechs to make the flow of money faster and more transparent in terms of pricing."

Tim Fox, Senior Advisor at EMIR

The companies involved

Qashio is a global spend management solution that provides a unified platform for corporate cards, expense management, and financial approvals. The company has positioned itself as a central hub for business spending, moving beyond simple expense tracking to include accounts payable and business travel within its ecosystem. It serves a market where businesses have historically treated international transfers as a disconnected cost of doing business rather than an integrated part of their financial strategy.

The firm operates in a regional market characterized by high growth and a push toward digital transformation. This environment is supported by industry veterans and advisors such as Rajesh Garg, the former Group CFO and Chief Sustainability Officer for 10 years at Landmark Group, and Tim Fox, a Senior Advisor at EMIR and former Chief Economist at Emirates NBD. These connections highlight Qashio's integration into the broader Middle Eastern financial landscape, where it competes by consolidating disparate financial tasks into a single interface. By expanding into international supplier payments, Qashio is moving into a space typically dominated by legacy correspondent banking networks, offering a more integrated alternative for modern finance teams.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has previously tracked Qashio’s efforts to modernize the financial infrastructure of the Middle East. In August 2023, the publication reported that Mastercard collaborates with Qashio to promote cashless society in UAE’s corporate sector. That partnership was a significant milestone for the company, focusing on the issuance of corporate cards to help businesses transition away from cash-heavy operations. The collaboration with Mastercard laid the groundwork for Qashio’s current expansion, as it established the firm’s credibility in managing corporate spend and provided the initial infrastructure for the rewards-based ecosystem that has now been extended to international payments through the Global Pay launch.

What this means

This move signals a significant shift in the B2B payments sector, where the "consumerization" of corporate finance is accelerating. By applying a rewards logic—long a staple of consumer credit cards—to high-value international wire transfers, Qashio is challenging the notion that cross-border payments must be a pure cost center. This puts immediate pressure on traditional banks and legacy FX providers who rely on opaque fee structures and lack integrated spend management tools. The central question for the industry is whether these incentives will be enough to lure large enterprises away from established banking relationships, or if incumbent players will be forced to launch similar loyalty-driven products to protect their market share in the UAE’s high-volume remittance corridor.