Payments Infrastructure: The Hidden Value Lever in Private Equity

During a recent TransferMate webinar, leading figures in private equity discussed a topic that rarely grabs headlines but increasingly influences business outcomes: payments infrastructure.

As companies scale across borders, the systems that support payments, cash management, and financial control become more than an operational necessity. They become a foundation for growth, efficiency, and value creation.

What starts as a simple payment process can quickly evolve into a strategic capability. New markets, currencies, and legal entities create complexity, and the businesses best positioned to scale are often those that have invested early in the infrastructure to support that growth.

‍

The Cost of Fragmentation

Consider a typical growth-stage company expanding into new markets.

The finance team opens a local bank account in Germany because customers want to pay domestically. Then another in France. Soon, there’ll be a banking partner in North America, a payments provider in Asia, and an FX platform somewhere in between. Each decision makes sense at the time.

The problem is what happens next. Finance teams have to log in to multiple portals. Reconciliation becomes more complex. Cash visibility becomes harder. Reporting takes longer. Teams spend time stitching together information instead of analyzing it.

In a way, this is the financial equivalent of technical debt. It builds slowly. Nobody notices it at first. Then suddenly it becomes a drag on growth.

For private equity-backed businesses, these inefficiencies create more than administrative headaches. They consume resources, increase costs, and make it harder to scale efficiently. FX fees accumulate. Operational overhead grows. Visibility decreases.

Perhaps most importantly, management teams spend time managing complexity rather than focusing on growth.

‍

Why Private Equity Firms Are Paying Attention

From a private equity firm’s perspective, payments infrastructure tells you a surprising amount about how a business operates.

As John Garnier, Corporate Controller at Brevet Capital, put it, "When you look at how a company processes payments, it tells you a little bit about how they're structured, if they're built to scale, particularly how efficient they are. It's really a telltale sign of the way a business operates."

When processes are integrated, automated, and well controlled, it is often a sign of broader operational maturity. The company has thought ahead. It has invested in scalable foundations rather than relying on short-term fixes.

The opposite is also true.

Businesses built on spreadsheets, manual workarounds, and disconnected banking relationships tend to reveal similar weaknesses elsewhere. Reporting becomes slower. Controls are less consistent. Scaling into new markets becomes more difficult.

The reality is, how payments are managed in a company can be a telltale sign of whether a company is truly built to scale.

This becomes particularly relevant during due diligence.

Buyers aren't simply assessing growth rates and EBITDA margins. They're evaluating how sustainable that growth is. They want to understand how money moves through the organization, how risks are managed, and how much confidence they can place in the underlying financial data.

‍

Scaling Globally Requires Local Capability

One of the biggest challenges for growing businesses is market expansion.

Imagine a company headquartered in Ireland discovers strong demand in South Korea. The opportunity is exciting. Revenue is growing. Customers are ready to buy.

But very quickly, operational questions emerge.

How will local customers pay? How will funds be collected? Which banks should the company work with? How will local regulations be managed? What happens when money needs to move between entities?

Cake Capital’s founder, Josiah Crombie, voiced this frustration, stating: "You start your business because you're passionate about something... and then all of a sudden your new responsibility is local banking relationships."

These aren't strategic questions founders typically set out to solve. Yet they can become major barriers to growth.

This is where infrastructure providers like TransferMate play an increasingly important role.

Rather than forcing businesses to build and manage complex international banking networks themselves, TransferMate provides a unified framework for moving money globally while operating locally. Businesses can access local collection and payment capabilities through a single platform, reducing the complexity of entering and operating in new markets.

The result is simple but powerful: companies can focus on growth rather than financial logistics.

"You have to transact globally. And so the ability to transact locally but scale globally is really a big differentiator." - Josiah Crombie, Founder, Cake Capital

‍

Control Matters as Much as Efficiency

Cost savings often dominate discussions about payments, particularly when it comes to FX.

But efficiency is only part of the story.

For finance leaders, control may be even more important.

Every manual process introduces risk. Every disconnected system creates another potential point of failure. Every workaround increases the likelihood of mistakes.

The consequences aren't always immediate. In fact, most of the time, nothing goes wrong.

Until it does.

That is why strong controls, compliance frameworks, and integrated workflows matter so much. They create consistency. They reduce operational risk. They build trust among investors, auditors, suppliers, and stakeholders.

"There's nothing more foundational than strong internal controls and being able to process payments in a stable manner." - John Garnier, Corporate Controller, Brevet Capital

Private equity firms repeatedly highlighted the importance of having trusted infrastructure partners that understand local requirements and compliance obligations. As businesses expand into unfamiliar jurisdictions, that expertise becomes increasingly valuable.

‍

Data Is Becoming the New Differentiator

For years, payments were viewed primarily as transactions. A payment happened. It was processed. The job was done.

Today, every transaction is also a source of information.

The most successful businesses are using integrated financial systems to aggregate data, generate insights, and make smarter decisions. They want to know where cash sits globally, how efficiently money is moving, where costs are increasing, and how working capital can be optimized.

When payment infrastructure is fragmented, that visibility becomes difficult.

However, data becomes accessible and actionable when infrastructure is unified.

"The ones that are doing the best are leveraging systems that aggregate information, streamline information, and put that into actionable insight." - Josiah Crombie, Founder, Cake Capital

This trend will only accelerate as AI becomes more deeply embedded across finance functions. From automated reconciliation to intelligent cash forecasting, the quality and availability of data will increasingly separate high-performing businesses from the rest of the market.

‍

Building for Exit From Day One

Perhaps the most important takeaway for private equity firms is that payments infrastructure should not be viewed as a project for later.

Too often, businesses wait until growth creates problems before investing in scalable foundations.

"If you're waiting to scale once you already have an opportunity on the table or once your fund or your entities or vendors are going to increase, you're already too late." - John Garnier, Corporate Controller, Brevet Capital

By that stage, the cost of change is higher. Complexity has already accumulated.

The strongest companies take a different approach. They build for scale before they need it.

They invest in infrastructure that can support new entities, new geographies, new currencies, and new payment methods long before those requirements arrive. They establish controls early. They create visibility early. They simplify operations early.

The payoff comes not only during the growth journey but also at exit.

When buyers see integrated systems, strong controls, reliable data, and efficient financial operations, they are seeing more than good housekeeping. They are seeing a business built for long-term success.

"The companies that are going to be most successful are the ones that are able to tap into the vast amounts of data and the technology that is available to them while also building the proper internal controls to properly scale." - John Garnier, Corporate Controller, Brevet Capital

And in an increasingly competitive investment landscape, that operational maturity can become a meaningful source of value.

For private equity firms, payments infrastructure is no longer just about moving money. It's about enabling growth, improving resilience, creating visibility, and building businesses that are ready for whatever comes next. TransferMate sits at the center of that transformation, helping firms and portfolio companies turn a traditionally overlooked function into a genuine strategic advantage.

Growth shouldn't be constrained by fragmented banking relationships, manual processes, or limited visibility. Speak with our team to discover how TransferMate helps firms build the financial infrastructure needed to scale with confidence.