Trade Finance Talks

In July this year, the Trump administration announced new 25% tariff levies on Brazilian imports. Justification? Pix, Brazil’s real-time payment system, has such deep market penetration that it creates an unfair trade barrier against American credit card companies.

While card payments remain the dominant method for consumer purchases in the UK, real-time payment systems are directly displacing cash transactions in emerging markets, ‘skipping’ the card transition. 

But do real-time payments really exclude traditional card payment rails? To discuss the issue, Mahika Ravi Shankar, Editor-in-Chief at Trade Finance Global (TFG), sat down with Bryan Sharkey, Executive Vice-President of Real-Time Payments International at Mastercard. Live from the 2026 Sibos conference in Miami, Florida, the pair discussed the need for connectivity in line with adoption, use cases driving uptake, and the balancing act banks face between fraud and instant payments. 

Just months after its $14 million Series A funding for the Argentinian cryptocurrency Belo, Tether announced that it’s backing EFY Finance’s seed round for a stablecoin expansion in Latin America (LatAm). Stablecoins are the digital currencies most commonly used for cross-border payments, and more than 99% of them are pegged to the US dollar (USD).

Tether is not alone. LatAm is attracting significant investor interest; startups in the region raised $4.7 billion in venture capital (VC) funding in 2025, up 65% from 2024. Stablecoins are leading VC inroads, with LatAm boasting the highest global adoption rates; 71% of LatAm institutions are using stablecoins for cross-border transactions. 

However, while the region has seen significant stablecoin capital volumes, many systems hold ‘stranded assets’; domestic instant-payment systems silo capital, and fragmentation across national systems remains high. 

Finance in LatAm topped the agenda at the Sibos 2026 conference, which, rumour has it, was held in Miami, Florida, to attract the region’s banks. During the conference, Trade Finance Global (TFG) sat down with Ximena Azcuy, Head of Network Partnerships for the Americas at Thunes, to discuss regulation, continental fragmentation, and the advantages of stablecoin adoption for volatile currencies. 

International debt collection requires an understanding of local laws, cultural norms and repayment practices to maintain trust and secure payments across borders.

A financing shortfall is choking trade. Funding is disproportionately allocated to richer nations and large corporations with more developed export credit infrastructure and strong credit histories. 

Against this backdrop, multilateral development banks (MDBs) can bridge finance gaps through capital provision, regional involvement, and coalition building, which lower investment risks for private capital. MDBs step in where traditional finance fails. 

In the latest episode of Trade Finance Talks, Doğa Usanmaz, Reporter at Trade Finance Global (TFG), spoke with Steven Beck, Head of Trade and Supply Chain Finance at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Beck, one of the architects of ADB’s annual gap study, discussed the inception of the ‘trade finance gap’, the role of digitalisation, and the ongoing impact of war in the Middle East. 

According to Beck, as the war in the Middle East surges and key commodity prices continue to soar, another gap in trade finance is emerging. 

Latin America's (LatAm) abundant critical mineral reserves, including the largest lithium reserves on the planet, have elevated the strategic importance of regional trade, with the resources to tackle and manage global challenges, from an energy transition to an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution.

For the third episode of Trade Finance Global (TFG) and BAFT’s podcast series, ‘Banking on the present’, Mahika Ravi Shankar, Deputy Editor at TFG, sat down with Daniel Pinho, Chief Operating Officer at BAFT and liaison for the BAFT Americas and Regional Bank Councils.

North American trade tensions challenge regional commerce as US-Canada trade tensions reshape payments, resilience and banking across the region.

Yesterday, 25 August, Canada announced tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of imports from the US. This came in retaliation for the new 50% tariffs being imposed on $27.6 billion of Canadian goods - in what Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne describes as a “dollar-for-dollar, rate-for-rate” strategy.

When US-Israeli airstrikes killed Iran’s supreme leader in February 2026, sparking an Iranian retaliation on US allies in the Middle East, many assumed this would be yet another flash in the pan in the increasingly volatile region. 

Six months on, conflict endures, proving more resilient and disruptive than anyone had bargained for, rerouting shipping routes and heightening concerns about the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint in oil transport. With global attention for conflict gravitating towards the Middle East, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is being considered in global commodity flows less and less. Nonetheless, recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian ports in the Black Sea, just a few thousand miles away, significantly exacerbate the global energy crisis.