What if cross-border payments were simple? Meet Smart Rails.

Brussels, February 17th–As cross-border payments continue to evolve, Smart Rails is playing a key role in driving this transformation. At the center of this innovation is Shirley Delvaux, Product Owner at DiXiO, where she leads strategic product development focused on financial messaging and payment capabilities. With strong expertise in payment schemes and instant credit transfer standards, she contributes to designing solutions that support clients’ evolving needs in the global payments landscape.

In this interview, she shares how Smart Rails simplifies access to multiple networks, automates routing, and enables banks to operate faster, smarter, and more efficiently. Read on to discover how it’s changing the game.

What Smart Rails is and how it works?

Can you explain what Smart Rails does for cross-border payments?

Shirley Delvaux: “Smart Rails is a cross-border payment orchestration platform that gives banks and financial institutions access to multiple payment networks such as Swift, Visa Direct, TerraPay, Thunes, and even emerging stablecoin rails through a single API. It centralizes and orchestrates all these connections so banks can manage international payments from one integrated interface.”

How does it act as both an aggregator and orchestrator?

Shirley Delvaux: “Smart Rails aggregates multiple payment networks behind one connection, then intelligently orchestrates payments across them. It validates messages, applies business rules, and automatically routes each transaction through the optimal rail, ensuring cost-effectiveness, speed, and reduced operational complexity.”

Why do banks need intelligent routing instead of just choosing one “cheapest” rail every time?

Shirley Delvaux: “Even if a rail appears to be the cheapest option at first glance, real-world pricing is much more dynamic. Different payout types such as mobile wallets, cards, and bank accounts as well as different verticals like B2B all come with their own fee structures. FX percentage fees also mean that the optimal rail can change depending on the transaction value. Without an intelligent routing engine, selecting the cheapest route every time becomes extremely complex and expensive to manage internally. Our intelligent routing also goes beyond just price: it can automatically choose the fastest network for each corridor and provide built-in failover. So, if the preferred “cheapest” rail is experiencing an outage or delay, the system instantly reroutes the payment through the next best alternative to avoid rejections and ensure continuity of service.”

How does Smart Rails optimize cross-border payment routes?

Shirley Delvaux: “The platform compares factors like fees, FX margins, corridor availability, and settlement speed in real time. For example, it might route a payout via Thunes for mobile wallets in emerging markets or via Visa Direct for card settlements in developed markets. This optimization improves both cost efficiency and delivery time.”

How do banks integrate Smart Rails with their systems?

Shirley Delvaux: “Smart Rails connects directly to banks’ existing core banking, payment hub, or treasury systems via secure APIs or SFTP. It is fully ISO 20022-compliant and can adapt to custom workflows across all supported networks, including future-ready stablecoin rails.”

How does Smart Rails prepare banks for stablecoin payments?

Shirley Delvaux: “Smart Rails is designed to be rail-agnostic, meaning it can process payments through any network, whether traditional or digital. Because all payment flows and messages are standardized through our single API, banks won’t need new integrations to support stablecoins. Once a stablecoin rail is added on our platform, they can simply enable it as another option within the same routing logic, using the same APIs, compliance checks, and monitoring tools they already have in place without having to invest in integration efforts themselves.”

Which processes are automated in cross-border payments?

Shirley Delvaux: “Smart Rails automates payment routing, beneficiary validation, format conversions, routing, reconciliation, exception handling, and confirmations across all connected networks such as Swift, Visa, Thunes, and TerraPay. This high level of automation enables straight-through processing and drastically reduces manual intervention.”

How are transactions secured and compliant?

Shirley Delvaux: “All data exchanges are encrypted, digitally signed, and access-controlled. Each rail, whether Swift or an alternative network, is monitored for AML, sanctions screening, and regulatory compliance, ensuring the same level of trust and transparency across all flows.”

How do banks monitor cross-border transactions?

Shirley Delvaux: “The platform provides real-time dashboards showing the full payment journey, status, and rail used. Historical and analytical views help with reconciliation, compliance, and performance reporting. Smart Rails is cloud-based, scalable, and resilient, maintaining performance even under high transaction volumes.”

The Benefits: What Smart Rails delivers for banks?

What are the main benefits for banks?

Shirley Delvaux: “Banks gain unified access to multiple payment networks for cheaper and faster settlements along with reduced operational overhead instead of performing multiple integrations. Smart routing ensures the most effective network is always selected, whether that is based on cost, speed or the one with the highest STP rate.”

How does Smart Rails prepare banks for future payment trends?

Shirley Delvaux: “Smart Rails future-proofs cross-border operations. It enables banks to easily switch between Swift, Visa, Thunes, TerraPay, and upcoming digital networks such as blockchain or deposit-token-based rails without needing new integrations. The result is a flexible, scalable foundation for the next generation of payments.”

What if I have specific connections to banking partners and other networks not in your list?

Shirley Delvaux: “When we implement the platform for you, we can integrate with your existing networks allowing you to access these along with the alternative payment networks that you have chosen from us. The routing engine will be able to take all these networks into consideration for the optimal route and is fully customizable such that any rulesets built will also account for specific agreements you might have with your partners.”