MassPay CEO Ran Grushkowsky on Cross-Border Payouts and Payment Reliability

MassPay’s reported transaction success rate of more than 99.6% puts the operational challenge of global payouts in focus: getting earnings to workers across different payment systems, currencies and local preferences without avoidable delays. CEO Ran Grushkowsky says the company serves more than 180 countries and supports over 70 currencies, routing payments through options that include bank transfers, digital wallets, crypto and cash pickup.

For Grushkowsky, the performance figure reflects a set of infrastructure choices rather than a single product launch. MassPay says it relies on direct banking relationships, backup payment routes, checks on payee details before funds are sent, and compliance processes embedded in its platform. The company also counts Coinbase and Visa among its partners. It reports an average first response time of seven minutes for customer support.

Reliability is built across the payout process

MassPay’s service is designed for gig workers, creators and freelancers who may need different ways to receive their earnings depending on where they live and what payment access they have. Its stated purpose is to reduce barriers that keep workers, particularly in emerging markets, from participating in the global digital economy.

The company uses AI-driven payment orchestration to select a route based on speed, security and cost. That means the underlying task is not simply to offer a long list of payout methods. It is to coordinate among them and make a choice suited to the recipient and transaction. A worker may want a wallet, while another may depend on a bank transfer or cash pickup.

Grushkowsky points to redundancy as one part of the reliability strategy: if a payment route fails, another option can help prevent the recipient from being left without a payout. MassPay Validate checks payee information before funds move, while the company says its compliance processes are built into the platform. These controls matter in a business where a failed transaction can mean a worker waits longer for money already earned.

The reported success rate above 99.6% is a company figure, and the interview does not specify its measurement period or calculation method. Still, the operating model behind it highlights the practical demands of cross-border payments: the route must work for the recipient’s market, and errors need to be caught before an irreversible transfer is sent.

A career shaped by failed payments

Grushkowsky says he entered fintech through exposure to the consequences of payment failures, rather than through an initial interest in the sector. He describes the experience of seeing a payment fail for someone who needed the money as the problem that has shaped his work since.

His career spans more than two decades building financial platforms and scaling global operations. Before joining MassPay, he held roles at USend, including chief operating officer and chief technology officer. USend was sold to Nasdaq-listed Inter & Co. Grushkowsky says his past roles gave him experience across technology and operations, including cross-border payments, compliance, fraud prevention and embedded finance.

That combination informs his view that payment platforms need to account for how money moves in practice, as well as what a receiving customer can actually use. In his account, understanding the mechanics behind payments helps build systems that can adapt across markets and requirements, rather than applying one model everywhere.

He measures the appeal of the industry in the directness of its effects. A shorter payout cycle can change when a recipient has access to earnings, he says, giving examples of workers in Manila, Lagos and Bogotá. The contrast he draws is between a payment taking 30 days and one taking 30 minutes. For a platform serving workers across countries, speed is meaningful only if the payment reaches the right person through a usable channel.

Fragmentation remains the operating challenge

Grushkowsky is critical of the difference between the industry’s promises of instant global payments and the experience some freelancers report: failed transfers, unexpected fees and long waits. He argues that the industry has made more progress for consumers in wealthy markets than for workers in emerging economies, whose needs are too often treated as peripheral.

MassPay’s future plans center on reducing the effect of fragmented banking systems and slow cross-border infrastructure. The company says it intends to combine routing with partnerships across traditional payment channels, digital wallets and blockchain-based networks to reduce failed or delayed payouts and extend near-instant payments to more workers.

For Grushkowsky, fragmentation is also a wider industry problem. Banking systems, local payment rails, wallets and blockchain networks create a patchwork that is likely to grow as new networks and regional schemes emerge. His emphasis is on coordinating those options for different use cases, rather than expecting one network to serve every market or recipient.

Faster payments also leave less time to correct mistakes. Grushkowsky says fraud monitoring and pre-send checks on the accuracy and validity of payment details become more important as transfers approach real time, because money sent to the wrong destination may be difficult to recover.

He connects that operational caution to a lesson from a past business relationship: he spent too long trying to change a partner he considered unreliable, assuming a sound business case would eventually resolve the problem. His takeaway was that attractive terms cannot compensate for a partner who cannot be relied on. At MassPay, he says, partner selection and backup routes are intended to keep a failure on one rail from reaching the payee.

The test for global payout platforms will be whether they can manage more payment options while keeping funds accurate, accessible and timely for recipients. MassPay’s reported reliability and support figures frame its current effort; Grushkowsky’s account makes clear that the harder work lies in sustaining that performance across different markets and payment systems.

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