A new partnership between Cross River Bank and Remitly, a Seattle-based remittance company, has enabled Remitly customers to receive international disbursements in near real time, thanks to Cross River’s recently expanded push-to-card capabilities.

“Cross River’s expansion into the international arena, with our enhanced technology and leading payments capabilities will fundamentally change cross-border transactions, allowing consumers to receive funds across the globe,” said Gilles Gade, founder and CEO of the Fort Lee, N.J.-based bank. Cross River was founded in 2008, and its banking-as-a-service platform powers large fintechs, including Stripe, Affirm and Coinbase. An April Series C funding round recently brought the bank’s total funding to $228 million, according to Crunchbase. The bank originated $8.7 billion in loans between March 2018 and 2019.

Using the bank’s international debit card rails via Visa Direct, Remitly customers can receive disbursements in a matter of seconds — versus hours or days — according to Nate Spanier, Remitly’s vice president of global payments and risk. The company, which has served more than 2.5 million customers through its global money transfer network, is among the first to use Cross River’s expanded services, with Cross River serving as the settlement bank for the push-to-card transactions.

“Many of our payment methods around the globe go into traditional banking systems, whether they’re bank-to-bank transfers, ACH networks or other remittance networks that have been built over time,” Spanier said. “The connectivity with Cross River is really through the Visa Direct platform, and in recent years Visa Direct has expanded their peer-to-peer network from domestic and pushed heavily into cross-border.”

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The new push-to-card international payment service is integrated into the bank’s API solutions, allowing partners such as Remitly to customize how they offer payments and which services to use. Through Cross River, Remitly customers can leverage Visa’s global payment network to send money to eligible card accounts, so that funds are transferred virtually directly into debit card accounts regardless of the brand or financial institution.

The partnership with Cross River coincides with a spike in remittance volumes through the platform, Spanier said, noting that pandemic-induced closures have prompted a “dramatic shift to digital.” Pre-coronavirus, about 70% of remittances were sent from physical cash locations, he said. Remitly has seen a 40% increase in transactions between February and March, and a 100% increase in new customers during the same time frame.