Fintech Ramp Surfs Dollar Wave By Helping U.S. Companies Turn To International Markets

With investors bracing for a global recession, three-year-old fintech Ramp is making the case that its cross-border expansion could give U.S. businesses the opportunity to operate more profitably. Announced on Tuesday, the New York City-based corporate credit card firm has launched international bill payments, buy-now pay-later financing and employee reimbursements across 176 countries and 83 currencies.

The move comes as the U.S. dollar extends its monster rally, skyrocketing nearly 20% over the past year to a two-decade high, according to the closely tracked Dollar Index. Historically, such greenback strength has been a harbinger of global recession—spelling trouble for foreign economies and U.S. companies with significant revenue abroad—but Ramp is focusing on the silver lining.

“Over the past quarter, people have really started to talk about what this means for the global economy, and it’s actually a bright spot for many business owners facing a lot of headwinds—whether it’s increased interest rates or the tight labor market,” says Eric Glyman, Ramp’s 32-year-old CEO. The dollar’s strength, he notes, has been “driving a huge spike” in businesses that are offshoring costs to protect profits and is particularly good for companies manufacturing goods or employing people internationally. Non-U.S. spending from Ramp clients has climbed nearly sixfold year over year and eclipsed more than $10 million last month alone. The company is gearing up for bigger numbers: The number of cards shipped abroad has ballooned 6,000% from last year.

With its international play, Ramp customers—all based in the United States—can now pay vendors in foreign currencies within minutes or reimburse employees in two days or less for out-of-pocket expenses overseas. The company joins competitors like Bill.com, which launched cross-border payments in 2019 and has since expanded the service to 130 countries, as well as corporate card giant American ExpressAXP
, which announced a similar digital-first feature in August. However, Ramp’s offering also integrates the cross-border payments with its flagship spending-management platform, which uses machine-learning technology to analyze expenses and recommend cost-cutting moves. As part of the launch, Ramp has worked with NetSuite to offer sales-tax support, including automatically telling clients when they may be liable for tax remittances or eligible for rebates on foreign transactions.

Among Ramp clients, New York City-based health-tech startup Candid has reaped the benefits of a strong dollar by expanding its overseas labor and production footprint. The company, which raised $160 million from investors in November, makes teeth-straightening aligners akin to Invisalign and last month opened a 83,000-square-foot factory in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. “We’re one of those companies that doesn’t have a ton of international exposure from a revenue standpoint, but we have a ton of international exposure from a cost standpoint,” says CEO Nick Greenfield, citing lower costs for transportation and manufacturing. He adds that Ramp’s algorithmic recommendations have helped generate about $15,000 in monthly savings by identifying things like duplicate software licenses and subscriptions.

Rising foreign-business outlays on Ramp have been biggest in freight services, with spending on major providers like Maersk and FedEx Freight climbing more than six times this year from 2021 levels. Spending on international shipping providers has grown more than 300%. Ramp says customers are increasingly tapping into global freelancer marketplaces such as Upwork and Toptal, on which transactions have jumped fourfold this year.

The push helps expand Ramp’s reach in the $120 trillion payments market as many fintechs struggle. The Global X FinTech ETF, which counts payments companies Block and Adyen among its biggest components, has cratered 49% this year, compared with a 21% decline for the S&P 500. Ramp, which makes money from taking a share of credit-card interchange fees, landed an $8.1 billion valuation in March and has raised more than $1.4 billion from investors including Goldman Sachs, Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Stripe. The company won’t disclose revenue but now counts more than 10,000 businesses—including real estate giant Douglas Elliman, fintech Marqeta and software companies Anduril and Webflow—as clients, more than four times the count one year ago.

“We started in the go-go days of WeWork and UberUBER
when the idea of spending less was a nice idea but wasn’t critical,” says Glyman of the changing economy, recalling Ramp’s launch in 2020 just weeks before the pandemic forced unprecedented global lockdowns. “Now as the cost of capital keeps going way up, and combined with other challenges, this idea of being more efficient with your spending and time has gone from being nice to a real necessity.”