By Helal Chowdhury
A founder can sell software to a customer on another continent in seconds. Getting permission to collect the payment can take weeks. A competitor with an equivalent product can receive money immediately.
We call this a borderless digital economy. But for many businesses, the border has simply moved from the shipping route to the payment provider’s onboarding screen.
When one company can begin selling immediately while another must arrange foreign incorporation, repeat ownership checks or find a costly intermediary, geography shapes competition before customers have judged either product.
As a digital product entrepreneur, I believe the industry is measuring the wrong kind of openness. We count where an application can be downloaded, not where its founder can reliably operate a business.
Software distribution has become global. Commercial permission has not.
The consequences go beyond the initial application. A founder who cannot secure suitable payment infrastructure may lose recurring billing, local payment methods, predictable payouts or affordable refunds. A competitor with direct access can invest the same money in the product or customer acquisition.
That is not merely a compliance difference. It can become a lasting advantage in price, growth and customer experience.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned that “the future of trade is digital, but the future of protectionism could be as well.” The risk is not limited to government rules. Private eligibility policies can also determine who gets practical access to digital commerce.
To be clear, not every exclusion is unfair. Payment companies must assess fraud exposure, sanctions, ownership and consumer protection. Different jurisdictions impose different legal duties, and some genuinely present greater risks. No legitimate proposal should force providers to approve businesses they cannot safely serve.
But those obligations do not justify collecting the same verified company information repeatedly without explaining why the evidence cannot travel.
This repetition also benefits established businesses. Larger companies can afford specialist compliance teams, multiple legal entities and backup processors. Small software founders often cannot. If switching providers triggers a fresh verification process and interrupted subscriptions, even an unhappy merchant has reason to stay.
In effect, onboarding friction can operate like a switching cost. A payment company need not deliberately exclude competitors for its procedures to protect incumbents.
Here is the position I would advance: the global software economy needs portable business verification, not automatic merchant approval.
The Legal Entity Identifier already provides a globally recognised way of identifying legal entities. The Financial Stability Board has recommended greater use of standard identifiers in cross-border payments. Those are only foundations.
A credible next step would be a reusable, digitally verifiable merchant record containing confirmed legal identity, authorised representatives, relevant ownership evidence and the provenance and expiry of each check. Providers could request only the elements required for their particular service and jurisdiction, with the merchant controlling disclosure where practical.
That would change the question from “Can you prove your company exists all over again?” to “Which new risks must this provider assess?”
Crucially, a reusable identity record must never turn into a universal trust score. An identity certificate should not label a business safe forever or allow one gatekeeper to decide whether it can trade globally. Fraud risks change. Credentials expire. Ownership changes. Receiving providers must retain responsibility for due diligence and decisions.
Nor should portability become a privacy hazard. A shared record needs clear consent where applicable, selective disclosure, revocation and safeguards against stolen or outdated credentials. The goal is less duplicated evidence, not one giant database of founders.
There is another reform as important as the technology: explainable commercial access. Providers should publish eligibility criteria in usable terms and give rejected merchants a meaningful route to identify correctable problems. Legal limits sometimes restrict explanations, but generic rejection should not become an automatic substitute for accountability.
Finally, we should measure the cost of borders that no one can see. Regulators and payment providers should track merchant onboarding times, repeated verification requests, appeal outcomes, processor switching delays and the share of legitimate attempted payments that cannot be completed. Publish comparable figures with appropriate privacy safeguards.
The Financial Stability Board’s 2025 report found that cross-border payment reforms had yet to deliver substantial global improvements to end users. Faster payment rails alone cannot fix a market where some legitimate sellers still struggle to gain entry.
A genuinely open digital economy does not require identical laws or universal acceptance. It requires that verified facts about a business can travel, that risk decisions can be challenged where appropriate, and that changing providers does not mean starting commercial life again.
If the internet has made software portable, why are we still treating the businesses that build it as strangers every time they cross a payment border?
About the Author
Helal Chowdhury is a digital technology entrepreneur and product growth leader whose work spans SaaS, proprietary software products, customer acquisition and technology commercialisation. His professional interests include digital commerce infrastructure, technology entrepreneurship, product economics and the development of globally accessible software businesses.