There are four realistic ways to move money between countries: correspondent banking, a local payment partner in each market, self-managed stablecoin rails, or a unified settlement layer like Djingr. They differ most on three things - how long settlement takes, whether you must pre-fund destination accounts, and what adding a new market costs you.
| Correspondent banking | Local partner per market | Self-managed stablecoin | Djingr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical settlement | 2-5 business days | Often same day in-market | Minutes on-chain, plus off-ramp time | ~1 min (<5 min EUR/GBP) |
| Pre-funding required | Yes, in every destination market | Yes, with each partner | Yes, at each off-ramp | None |
| Fee basis | Fee per intermediary plus FX spread, often disclosed after the fact | Negotiated per partner | Network fee plus exchange spread plus off-ramp fee | From 0.8%, published per corridor |
| Adding a market | New banking relationship | New partner and new integration | New off-ramp and new compliance review | Configuration |
| Integrations to maintain | One per bank | One per partner | One per chain or exchange | One API |
| Who handles cryptocurrency | No one | No one | You do | Optional - fiat-to-fiat by default |
A correspondent payment is not one transfer, it is a chain of them. The money hops between banks that hold accounts with each other until it reaches one that can pay into the destination market. Each hop adds a fee, an FX spread and a delay, and the chain only moves during business hours in each jurisdiction.
The delay is the visible cost. The larger one is usually the capital you have to leave sitting in destination accounts so payouts can clear at all - money you own but cannot use, scaling with the number of markets you operate in rather than with how much you send.
For one or two markets this is often the right answer. A local provider knows the rails, the regulation and the payout options, and can be faster and cheaper than a correspondent chain.
It scales badly. Each additional market is a new commercial negotiation, a new integration with its own interface and reconciliation quirks, and a separate pre-funded balance. Five markets means five relationships to maintain and five balances to keep topped up.
You can, and for some businesses it is the right choice. Moving value on-chain is fast and the transit cost is low.
The difficulty is the last mile. Converting to local currency and reaching a bank account or mobile money wallet usually means exchanges, over-the-counter desks and manual steps, each with its own spread, limits and compliance requirements. It also means your business handles cryptocurrency directly, with the treasury, accounting and regulatory questions that brings.
Djingr is the same idea as the stablecoin route with the last mile solved and the cryptocurrency handling removed. Funds are collected locally, moved across borders over the Bitcoin Lightning Network, and paid out into local bank accounts or mobile money on demand.
Because transit happens at the moment of payment, nothing has to sit pre-funded in a destination account. Adding a market is a configuration change rather than a funding decision or a new integration. Fiat-to-fiat is the default, so neither you nor your recipients need touch cryptocurrency - though you may fund or receive in Bitcoin or USDT if you want to.
Worth being direct about this, because no single method wins everywhere.
If you need a market Djingr does not cover, nothing else matters. Live corridors are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, the United Kingdom and Europe, plus USDT and Bitcoin over Lightning. Brazil, the United States, Malawi and Zimbabwe are announced but not yet live. If your corridor is not on that list, a correspondent chain or a local partner is still your option.
Djingr sells to businesses and licensed financial institutions, not to consumers. An individual sending money home is not the customer; the remittance operator serving them is.
If you already move high volume on a single corridor with efficient local rails, the gain is smaller than for a business operating across several markets. The advantage compounds with the number of markets, because that is what pre-funding scales with.
Most businesses do not pick one method for everything. Keeping existing arrangements where they already work and routing the slow or expensive corridors differently is a normal outcome.
Tell us which markets you pay into and we will show you the settlement time and the rate.
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