The maritime sector moves a quarter of global trade across borders that change with every voyage. The payment infrastructure available to maritime operators has not kept pace. Correspondent banking corridors between Europe, Latin America and Africa have narrowed. De-risking has reduced jurisdictional coverage in precisely the regions maritime trade depends on.
Settlement times are still measured in days when port costs accumulate by the hour. And the rise of stablecoins as a treasury layer has left a gap between how Global South operators hold value and how counterparties — in Europe and across the corridor — accept payment.
BunkerPay was built to close that gap.
Shipyards, fuel suppliers, port authorities, ship chandlers and disbursement accounts across Europe, LATAM and Africa operate within the traditional banking system — and will continue to. Their workflows are built around SEPA, SWIFT, IBANs and local payment networks.
What has changed is the operator side. A growing share of international maritime business is conducted by entities for whom traditional USD or EUR banking is restricted, expensive or unavailable — particularly in the LATAM and African corridors.
BunkerPay operates a regulated payment corridor network connecting Europe, Latin America and Africa. Operators fund in EUR, USD, USDC or USDT, hold funds in a virtual IBAN in their company's name, and settle through SEPA, SWIFT or supported local rails — to whichever maritime counterparty they need to pay, anywhere in the corridor.
BunkerPay is a payment platform focused on the maritime sector. We are not a bank. We are not a stablecoin issuer. We are not a broker. We are infrastructure — designed to sit between how maritime operators hold value and how maritime counterparties receive payment, across each corridor we serve.
Our role is the same in every direction of the network: route the payment through the rail it actually needs to take, on infrastructure that meets institutional regulatory standards, in a manner the counterparty's bank recognises and accepts.
The founder of BunkerPay spent years operating commercial vessels and saw, first hand, how poorly the existing payment landscape served the maritime sector. Delayed settlements while port costs accumulated. FX markups bearing no relationship to interbank prices. Correspondent banking chains that introduced friction at every hop. Counterparties in jurisdictions where access to USD or EUR banking was restricted or unreliable.
What was missing was not another fintech. It was payment infrastructure built specifically for how the maritime industry actually moves money — between currencies, between rails, between counterparties on three continents that were never going to change their banking process to suit the operator's. That is BunkerPay.
BunkerPay operates as a payment platform focused on the maritime sector, whose payment, currency and stablecoin conversion infrastructure is provided exclusively by institutions authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (UK) and Banco de España (EU).
We are deliberate about how we describe this relationship. BunkerPay does not hold a payment institution licence in its own right; we operate on regulated rails provided by licensed institutions. Every transaction processed through BunkerPay is subject to the supervisory standards applied to electronic money institutions, payment service providers in the UK, and authorised payment and electronic money institutions in Spain.
For corporate account enquiries, payment route assessments or treasury team conversations, our team responds within one business day. Active corridors across Europe, LATAM and Africa.
The optimal route depends on where the payment originates, where it needs to land, what currency or asset funds the transaction, and what the counterparty's bank accepts. Our team performs payment route assessments for new client engagements — without obligation, before any account is opened.