Blockchain: The New Hope In Cross-Border Payments & Fraud Reduction

Real Thoughts from PJ Networks Pvt Ltd Desk — Coffee 3

By Sanjay Seth

Quick Take

If you don’t have time to read (and who does?), here’s the TL;DR:

• This causes the traditional cross-border payment to be slow, expensive and error-prone.
• Blockchain tech reduces that friction by making transactions verifiable, instantaneous, and at times cheaper.
• It’s not a silver bullet — but it makes committing fraud way harder.
• We are not just talking about securing blockchain payments, at PJ Networks, we are actually doing it for global clients.

Okay, caffeine’s kicked in. Let’s ride.

1. Introduction Challenges in Traditional Cross-Border Payments

You’re not crazy — international transactions are a pain. Have been for decades.

I remember setting up muxes for PSTN pipe voice and data in the ’90s. Just sending a fax internationally back then was a mission. And that legacy behavior extended into banking.

Fast-forward a little more — it’s now 2024 and I’ve just returned from DefCon — where we’re still talking about how money moves like it’s 1999.

What still sucks about old-school cross-border payments:

• Slow settlement times (taking 3-5 business days — really?)
• Dig fees on high intermediaries (cuz all banks want their share)
• No transparency (where is all the money going? Anyone’s guess.)
• FX rates change mid-transaction
• High fraud targets (I have personally consulted on a breach where a spoofed SWIFT message diverted millions)

The irony? In a world in which I can send a 4K video halfway around the Earth in an instant — money is lagging behind.

2. Blockchain — The Solution for Quicker & Cheaper Transfers

Here’s the thing.

It’s a scary time for a lot of people: blockchain. Especially CISOs burned before (hey, rug pulls and crypto scams). But if you cut through the hype and focus on the tech, here’s what blockchain nails:

Transactions that are borderless, instant, and verifiable.

Let me share a real case in point. For instance, one of our clients, a logistics firm based in Mumbai, needed to make weekly USD payments to partners in the UAE and Singapore. Bank wires were 2-3 days (with $45-$65 in each wire fees) and FX losses. We on-boarded them to a blockchain deployment of a permissioned payment platform.

Turnaround time? Under 20 minutes.

Fees? Slashed by over 70%.

Compliance checks? Tied to the smart contracts.

Mic drop. I have said this in board rooms, and I am going to say it here, blockchain is not a trend, it is infrastructure.

Key Benefits:

• Speed: Adding blocks takes seconds to minutes. No more waiting for bank hours around the world.
• Irreversibility: No reversals, no restorations. Once it’s written, it’s written.
• Reduced Costs: Remove third-party intermediaries.
• Transparency: All transactions are traceable (good for auditors).

All of this means a more effective process and fewer attack surfaces—which leads me to my favorite subject…

3. Fraud Prevention

Now we’re talking.

Look, you can’t get rid of all cybercrime (I’ve been in the trenches with Slammer, I know how fast things explode). But blockchain — when done right — makes fraud exponentially more difficult.

Why?

Because of immutable ledgers. That is, you can no longer just edit the spreadsheet like old-timey internal bank fraudsters. You’d need to rewrite vast block sequences across many nodes—typically owned by different entities.

Also, smart contracts ensure that funds don’t move if the conditions aren’t met. No backend fudging where a human overrides anyfing. That’s huge, particularly in the context of BEC (Business Email Compromise) type of attacks where bad guys are attempting to get the payments diverted.

Plus:

• Cryptographically secured: Each txn. signed, verified, timestamped.
• Decentralized: Best practice of no single point failure I like that. (The backbone of Zero Trust, in a way.)
• Audit trails: Simplifies forensic investigations significantly. I’ve done post-mortems where if we had blockchain we would have saved weeks, trust me.

Let me share with you one story — the entire way back in 2022, we partnered with a financial services firm that lost ₹4.7 crores from a fake invoice: scam. Their CFO signed off on it, because it was apparently coming from the MD. In a system backed by a blockchain, that transaction would have failed automated validation steps, because the signatures on the metadata wouldn’t match based on origin and wallet credentials.

Now, they’ve transitioned to PJ’s tamper-proof digital ledger solution. Haven’t had a breach since.

4. Blockchain Payment solutions by PJ Networks

At PJ Networks Pvt Ltd, we aren’t rolling out blockchain simply because it’s fashionable. We are doing it because it does work. It is also in line with our mantra — Security First, Speed Second, Cost Third.

In the past two years, we have:

• Assisted 3 private banks to integrate the blockchain into internal settlement layers—integrated with Zero Trust Identity Access controls.
• Built multi-sig wallets with layer 3 & 7 (Yes, we firewall access to contracts. Layered security matters).
• Migrated a conglomerate from traditional ERP-to-SWIFT system to a hybrid Hyperledger network — reducing their human error risk by 60+%.

We don’t start with tech. Our process does not begin by redesigning the technology stack.

It all begins with threat modeling. We ask:

• Who are your users?
• Which transactions are most valuable?
• How would an evil person exploit your workflows?

Only then we map the right blockchain layer (public, private, or consortium) And yes, we do monitoring builtin — because nobody talks about visibility enough in crypto-native payments.

Bonus tip: If you’re on the blockchain but your endpoints are talking over vulnerable, unpatched routers… just… why. (We can help with that too.)

5. Conclusion

I’ve had my nose in networks since the early ’90s—when getting a branch office wired would take 3 weeks of leased line juggling and dropped calls. And I’ve been on the cybersecurity rollercoaster for worms, ransomware, insider threats, and yes—AI-powered bullshit solutions that promise everything and deliver nothing.

However, I’m genuinely excited about Blockchain Payments, Cross-Border Security, and Digital Transactions.

Because we now have a technology that operates global finance as the internet does.

Is it perfect? No.

Is it secure by default? Also no.

But is it an improvement over the half-century-old SWIFT flow orgs still use? Hell yes.

If you’re managing day-to-day cross-border transactions and you’ve not explored a blockchain-secure pathway—you’re behind. And most seriously — your risk profile is old.

Reach out. Get a payment security flow that is fast, traceable and frankly, let PJ Networks design this for you. Pretty cool.

Until then, patch your endpoints. Rotate your keys. And for the love of security — quit using Summer2024! as your admin password.

Sanjay Seth

Founder – PJ Networks Pvt Ltd

Posted in Featured, News, and Bug Hunting.

Still Buzzing from DefCon

Also… somebody remind me to cease and desist before 7PM certain coffee blending