PhotonPay, a leading global payment platform and digital financial infrastructure provider, has been recognised at the Adam Smith Awards Asia 2025, receiving the Highly Commended Winner award in the Best Foreign Exchange Solution category.

As a mission-critical financial infrastructure provider for SMEs expanding globally, PhotonPay faced increasing operational constraints that limited its ability to support customers effectively. Licensed across multiple treasury jurisdictions, the company relied on a broad set of banking partners, resulting in a fragmented network of disconnected accounts and isolated liquidity pools. Without centralized FX access, PhotonPay was forced to hold significant liquidity buffers across jurisdictions, creating inefficiencies and tying up capital.

The limitations of traditional banking cut-offs further compounded these challenges. When cross-currency needs emerged during evening hours, the treasury team could only hedge exposures or complete back-to-back trades the next day, leaving positions unhedged overnight and increasing operational risk. Manual intervention was required for urgent transfers, with staff working extended hours to manage cross-time-zone operations. Settlement delays of T+1 or T+2 were common for customer payouts, and the lack of automation in fund movements introduced additional cash flow constraints for clients. With a modest automation budget, PhotonPay needed a sophisticated yet cost-efficient treasury solution that could deliver round-the-clock cross-border and cross-currency execution without demanding large-scale technological investment.

PhotonPay adopted J.P. Morgan's Kinexys Digital Payments, the industry's first blockchain-based foreign exchange solution offered by a global bank. Built on distributed ledger technology, the solution provides 24/7 liquidity access through Kinexys Blockchain Deposit Accounts (BDAs) with on-chain foreign exchange execution. Cross-border and cross-currency transactions can now be completed within approximately 90 seconds, a substantial improvement over previous T+1 or T+2 settlement cycles. Serving nine global locations and five major currencies representing 90% of daily FX volume, Kinexys extends settlement windows by eight additional hours beyond conventional banking cut-offs, eliminating the multi-day delays that previously restricted PhotonPay's treasury operations.