Home Rule: Planning Payment Efficiency for Small Finance Functions in Growing Businesses

Published: October 16, 2026

For companies expanding internationally but equipped only with a small finance team, what are the signs that centralisation is calling, and how far should it go? In this brief Q&A, Ivan Kroshnyi, Founder, SharPay, reveals ways in which businesses on a growth path could best set up their payment and treasury arrangements.

What decisions and activities should a growing business standardise first, and why?

When a business scales globally while keeping a lean finance team, the single most critical element to standardise first is what information finance receives, specifically, real-time data aggregation and audit-trail visibility.

If a CFO or small central treasury team lacks a unified, real-time view of multicurrency balances, FX exposure, and cross-border transaction statuses, decision-making becomes reactive and prone to costly errors. Standardising the data layer first creates the baseline needed to control everything else.

The second priority is standardising how overseas payments are approved (matrix controls and permissioning). Establishing hard-coded, role-based approval workflows – such as dual-authorisation triggers, transaction caps, and automated compliance checks – ensures operational safety regardless of location.

Finally, centralising who appoints payment providers ensures that the company doesn't end up with a patchwork of isolated vendor contracts. Rather than forcing a small finance team to negotiate, integrate, and manage dozens of local payment gateways and banking relationships individually, the payment rails, local banking and acquiring, and payout methods should be connected through a single multicurrency platform, via a dashboard or API.

What aspects can remain local, and are there investments that can wait until the business is larger?

Local teams should be granted autonomy over micro-operational context and localised vendor relationships, provided they operate within the central risk framework. Local teams understand regional payment preferences – such as specific alternative payment methods or local clearing nuances – and should be allowed to request specific payment methods that suit their local clientele.

However, several heavy capital and operational investments can – and should – wait until the business reaches a higher maturity threshold:

1. A proprietary TMS: In the early-to-mid growth phase, investing heavily in building or licensing a large enterprise-level TMS is uneconomical. Consider instead modern payment platforms that are equipped to offer embedded multicurrency IBANs, automated reconciliation, and built-in, out-of-the-box FX hedging tools.
2. Local treasury entities: Setting up physical treasury hubs or holding entities in every new market may be unnecessary if a compliant, multijurisdictional payment provider can handle local-to-global payout routing natively.
3. Banking infrastructure: Building individual banking relationships in every country adds a significant legal and compliance overhead. Smaller companies should consider leveraging an orchestration platform capable of unifying local collecting and global settling.

How often should a business revisit its payment arrangements?

A business should not wait for an operational crisis or a failed audit to review its payment architecture. There are three clear operational triggers that indicate it is time to revisit payment arrangements:

1. The '3+ providers' friction threshold: When a finance team finds itself manually managing more than three separate payment providers or bank portals, and this is leading to fragmented daily reporting, manual Excel reconciliations, and double-entry errors, it may be time to consolidate into a single-window infrastructure, automating reporting, and liquidity routing.
2. FX and working capital drag (margin loss): The moment cross-border volume in a new currency exceeds 5-10% of total revenue, or when FX conversion spreads and delayed settlement cycles (T+3 or longer) begin eating up 2-3% of margin, the treasury model should be re-engineered towards local receiving-accounts and automated FX hedging.
3. Regulatory and volume milestones: Review is essential when entering highly regulated markets (such as the EU or specific Middle Eastern corridors) or when reaching transaction volumes at which custom interchange rates and dedicated virtual IBAN structures could significantly reduce processing fees.

Bearing all these points in mind, the goal for a growing business with a small finance team is not to add more tools as it scales, but to adopt an infrastructure that absorbs complexity under the hood. This can enable the team to effectively and efficiently manage a far greater workload as the business continues expanding.