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Gary Palmer, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Payall Payment Systems, has multiple firsts in the fintech space to his credit — from creating the first prepaid card issuing processor to building the first real-time bank transfer infrastructure in the U.S. But don’t let him catch you calling him an entrepreneur. He prefers something humbler — and truer to his purpose: the “repairman.” 

“I simply try to fix things,” Palmer says. “My mindset is to help banks deal with legacy technology, legacy processes, and legacy — as well as new risks.” 

“For a bank to succeed and grow, you can’t address one of these in isolation. They’re interconnected. And I’ve always believed that banks should be the ones who lead in providing modern financial services, because consumers trust the safety and soundness that only a regulated financial institution can provide.” 

“I see banks and their customers as the most important part of the ecosystem,” Palmer adds. “We don’t compete with banks — we build technology to power them.” 

In 2016, Palmer began investigating why cross-border payments were seen by regulators everywhere as high-risk, opaque, slow, costly, and non-inclusive. “I found these five words repeated everywhere,” he recalls. “And I thought — if we fix those, financial institutions and their customers win.” 

True to his repairman approach, Palmer spent time with originating institutions, correspondent banks, central banks, regulators, and payment networks to understand each pain point and what the solution would be. 

Two years later came Payall — the first-ever purpose-built infrastructure for the cross-border ecosystem, that enables banks and other regulated entities to send and receive payments in over 130 countries — more than 60 in real time — across 90+ currencies. 

“We built the infrastructure modules every participant needs to make payments that are safe, transparent, immediate, and low-cost,” Palmer says. 

Cross-border payments continue to grow rapidly: FXC Intelligence estimates the market could reach $320 trillion by 2032. Yet correspondent banking has shrunk by roughly 25% in the past decade. 

The resulting vacuum has been partially filled by blockchain and stablecoins, and by networks like Visa Direct and Mastercard Move. Yet, as Palmer noted during a Payments Association panel earlier this year, the system remains defined by “fear and friction.” 

“The fear comes from banks’ inability to manage counterparty and transaction risk with confidence,” he said. “The friction comes from outdated, manual processes that make cross-border payments slow and expensive.” 

That’s where Payall comes in – first by ensuring “trust” – a foundational deliverable from Payall. Its proprietary, purpose-built capabilities, such as real-time Know Your Transaction and global Know Your Customer’s Customer, digitize compliance, automate rule execution, and provide 100% real-time see-through transparency for every participant in the chain.  And these capabilities are applicable regardless of the payment type or technology — fiat, stablecoin, or what’s to come — to ensure trust.  

“For 50 years, correspondent banks couldn’t see anything in real time,” Palmer explains. “They relied on post-fact audits of 0.0001% of transactions. Now, they can see — through our software — every payment, every rule executed by the originating institution, and every supporting document, from invoices and customs declarations to sanctions checks.” 

“For the first time, correspondent banks have full transparency, see-through visibility, and real-time evidence, so these payments are genuinely safe.” 

Unlike blockchain or stablecoins, Payall’s architecture is familiar, interoperable, and regulator-friendly. Payall has built a first-ever global single shared platform that operates in harmony with existing bank systems and currencies, versus disrupting them  — but also supports innovations while ensuring safety and trust. 

“It’s a real-time global single shared platform — like what central banks already use — but built for the cross-border ecosystem with dozens of purpose-built mission-critical applications, real-time ledgering globally, and bank-controlled FX and liquidity,” Palmer says. “It’s not blockchain; it’s faster, more efficient, but we do support stablecoins and enable logical co-existence.”   

In September, J.P. Morgan published a four-point guide for financial institutions to navigate the cross-border payments evolution. One of these trends was inevitable: AI, as part of platform modernisation. “In the face of this growth, global businesses are turning to their banks and fintech partners for solutions that make payments more instant, secure, and transparent,” J.P. Morgan noted. 

Payall is looking to utilise AI to expedite digital due diligence, auto-populate KYB applications, and extract unstructured data from bills of lading, custom declarations, or invoices. So far, so good; but for managing counterparty risk, which Palmer describes as the ‘single biggest problem of cross-border payments’ and a ‘failed function in most banks’, Payall has something even more powerful coming up: AI-driven counterparty surveillance. 

“AI will serve as a surveillance A-team,” Palmer explains. “It can detect ownership changes, negative activity, or if an institution’s accounts appear on the dark web — and bring that intelligence directly into the bank’s risk tool in real time.” 

Gary Palmer is participating in Fintech Connect in London on December 2-3, and his message is a conciliatory one. Fintech providers may be here to help banks overcome their legacy tech issues, but that doesn’t mean they’re here to compete with them. 

“I want the message to be that fintechs and banks have to work together, not view each other as competitors, or threats, or risks,” adds Palmer. “If they approach this as a shared mission to serve customers better, they’ll achieve far more through collaboration than competition.”