Problems of international payments

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of international payments are made every second of everyday by businesses. Business-to-business payments are primarily associated with supplier payments related to the import of goods and services. Despite the potentially large number of international payments associated with international trade and commerce, the process of transmitting money cross borders remain extremely complex, not just in terms of routing payments but also in terms of handling and passing payments between stake holders in the transaction chain (correspondents). Since International payments involve contacts with at least two different states and their respective legal system, it is intuitive that they raise issues of conflicts of laws. Anybody even superficially familiar with private international law would be quick to realize that such issues are bound to be numerous and complicated. Yet it is surprising that, despite the number of international payments made each day around the world and the likelihood of disputes liable to raise conflicts problems, both the case laws and literature on these issues are quite scarce and this is what author shall seek to answer by the end of this paper.