The currency exchange system in Venezuela is known as the "Ancillary Foreign Currency Administration System" or Sicad.
The Central Bank is able to issue bonds through the "SITME" market. In 2012, it was reported that $44 million worth of bonds were purchased through SITME in a single day for Petroleos de Venezuela SA.
Globalization is driving corporations to transact more frequently across borders. Consumers are also transacting more on a global basis—buying from foreign eCommerce sites; traveling, living, and working abroad. For the payments industry, the result is higher volumes of payments—in terms of both currency value and number of transactions. This is also leading to a consequent shift downwards in the average value of these payments.
The ways these payments are made can be cumbersome, error prone, and expensive. Growth, after all, is often messy. Payments systems set up decades ago continue to be used sometimes retrofitted, sometimes force-fitted—to meet the needs of modern corporations. And, not infrequently, the systems creak and groan as they bear the strain.
For users of these systems, on both the paying and receiving sides, it can be difficult and time-consuming to learn how to use cross-border payments tools, and how to set up processes to make optimal use of them. Solution providers (both banks and non-banks) also face challenges, struggling to cobble together old systems to meet new demands. But for these providers, cross-border payments are both lucrative (especially given foreign exchange conversion revenue) and rewarding, in terms of the overall financial relationship created with the end customer.
The challenges for global payments are not simply those resulting from volume increases. A number of economic, political, and technical forces are changing the types of cross-border transactions conducted. Consider these factors:
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