Stripe and PayPal Ventures back India’s Xflow to streamline cross-border B2B payments

Xflow, an Indian fintech startup, has attracted fresh backing from both Stripe and PayPal Ventures in a $16.6 million funding round as it pushes to play a bigger role in cross-border B2B payments — a segment still largely controlled by banks and weighed down by manual, opaque processes.

The Series A round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing investors Square Peg, Stripe, Lightspeed, and Moore Capital, while PayPal Ventures joined as a new investor. The all-equity financing values the Bengaluru-based company at $85 million post-money and brings Xflow’s total funding to more than $32 million so far.

Even as domestic payments in India have rapidly digitised, cross-border B2B transfers for Indian exporters remain heavily dependent on traditional banking rails. Exporters often face limited clarity on fees, settlement schedules, and the final rupee amount that reaches their accounts. The friction becomes especially painful for larger exporters moving millions of dollars into India to cover payroll and operational costs, creating space for infrastructure-focused fintechs like Xflow that promise faster, more transparent international money movement.

Founded in 2021, Xflow provides cross-border payment infrastructure for a wide range of business users — from exporters and SaaS companies to platforms and freelancers — helping them collect international payments, manage foreign exchange, and settle funds into India.

“Cross-border B2B payments were stuck in a different age compared to UPI,” co-founder Anand Balaji said in an interview, referencing India’s widely used instant domestic payments system, the Unified Payments Interface.

Balaji, who previously helped establish Stripe’s India business, launched Xflow alongside former Stripe colleagues Ashwin Bhatnagar and Abhijit Chandrasekaran.

Last year, Xflow said it enabled Indian businesses to collect payments from more than 100 countries in over 25 currencies. Balaji said the company processed close to $1 billion in annualised cross-border payment volume last year, representing roughly tenfold growth compared with the same period in 2024.

According to the startup, its customer base has grown to around 15,000 businesses, including SaaS firms, global capability centres (offshore units that multinationals operate in India), IT services exporters, freelancers, and fintech platforms.

Transaction sizes vary significantly across segments. Balaji said global capability centres typically charge $1 million to $2 million per transaction, goods exporters typically charge $30,000 to $40,000, and freelancers typically charge about $3,000.

Xflow is positioning itself more as an infrastructure layer than as a consumer-facing payments product. It offers APIs that allow platforms and exporters to embed cross-border money movement directly into their own products and workflows.

“We didn’t want to build the next Wise — we want to power the next thousand Wises,” Balaji said.

The company has also rolled out an AI-based foreign exchange tool to help finance teams improve the timing of currency conversions. Xflow says the feature has delivered incremental gains for some customers by supporting more data-driven FX decisions.

The tool lets businesses set target conversion rates rather than simply accepting bank quotes at settlement. Balaji compared the approach to limit orders in trading — instructions to buy or sell only at a specified price.

“What we’ve added is the prediction layer and the ability actually to set a limit order,” he said. Balaji added that the model currently provides a three-day forecast with about 92% confidence, although that figure could not be independently verified.

Xflow faces competition on multiple fronts: banks continue to dominate larger cross-border transfers, while fintechs such as Wise, Payoneer, and Skydo compete more heavily at the lower end of the market. Balaji said Xflow’s emphasis on high-value transactions and API-led infrastructure helps differentiate the company from many rivals.

Balaji said the startup plans to use the new capital to build additional products on top of its payments infrastructure and to secure regulatory licenses in additional markets. Xflow is preparing to introduce import capabilities in the coming months and is pursuing licenses in jurisdictions including Singapore. At the same time, it already holds a payments license in Canada, even as it remains focused primarily on India.

Xflow also said it has received final authorisation from the Reserve Bank of India for a Payment Aggregator–Cross Border (PA-CB) license covering both exports and imports. The company has signed platform partnerships with Easebuzz and Drip Capital to embed its cross-border features into their offerings.

Balaji said investment from Stripe and PayPal Ventures has strengthened Xflow’s credibility with banking and regulatory partners, even as the startup continues to work commercially with multiple payment providers.

The company currently has about 65 employees as it continues scaling its cross-border payments infrastructure business.