DISCOVER
Eraj Alisherov
Why International Growth Breaks Financial Institutions
Global on Paper, Local in Practice
February 2026
— About 80% of those who visit my website are from the financial world. You are a bank, EMI, PSP, MSB, whatever, okay? Some of you have a dedicated team, department, or person whose only task is a global handshake — something like, “Hey, your company and your services are good, and my company would like to use them.” But even if that sounds that easy, many of them fail like hell, miserably kissing the ground and hugging planet Earth. And it’s not because the world is unfair or because the market is tough. It means you chose the wrong person for global tasks. You hired someone who can send emails, but not someone who can move deals. I am here to tell you how to find the right negotiator and how to make sure he really is what he claims to be — not just a LinkedIn title with zero fire behind it. The uncomfortable truth is that global negotiation is not about English level, suits, or polished PowerPoint presentations. It’s about pressure tolerance, clarity, and the ability to smell bullshit from miles away. If your “global handshake” guy panics when someone pushes back, delays decisions for weeks, or hides behind compliance every time things get uncomfortable, then you don’t have a negotiator — you have a coordinator. And coordinators don’t build empires.
SERVICES
Multi-Currency Banking • Strategic Partnerships • White-Label Solutions
It Didn’t Always Look Like This
Before we move on, I gotta reveal that I wasn’t the kind of negotiator companies would dream about. I wasn’t born with a golden Rolodex or some magic charisma. But I honed my talent in what I can do best, and I already have the results — and I gotta keep moving. You can always be better. The moment you think you’re the finished product, you’re already outdated. For those reading this, please do not take it word by word, since the global perspective and the things around you can change really quickly; what I say today might be obsolete tomorrow. Regulations shift, markets collapse, new players appear out of nowhere. The only thing I’ll use in this article is my common sense — first as a human, and second as a negotiator in the world of finance. And common sense, surprisingly, is rarer than liquidity in a crisis.
And improvement in this game is brutal. You learn from rejection, from unanswered emails, from deals that collapse at the last minute after three months of work. Nobody writes about those. Nobody posts on LinkedIn about getting fucked by timing or internal politics. But that’s where the real negotiator is built — in silence, in analysis, in self-correction. If you can’t audit yourself honestly, you’ll repeat the same stupid mistakes forever.
The first thing a negotiator needs to understand is what he truly wants — or what his company wants from him. Can I say that when it comes to eating, you know your shit very well and your preferences? Oh my God, you are a dragon when it comes to eating preferences, my dear negotiator. You know exactly how much Coke you want, which type of Coke you want, and how you want it served. A whole new level of customization just for water that tastes different. You’ll argue about ice cubes, about glass vs. bottle, about the fucking temperature. But what about the goals your company gives you? Suddenly you become blurry. Suddenly you “explore options.” No. You gotta understand the goal and move on accordingly.
Clarity
Understanding Is a Weapon You Don’t Realize
Clarity is power. If the mandate is volume, don’t chase prestige. If the mandate is cost reduction, don’t bring back “strategic partnerships” that cost triple the budget. Write the goal down. Break it into measurable parts. Ask uncomfortable questions internally before you ask anything externally. Because once you go to the market confused, the market will eat you alive.
If your company gives you a task and says something like, “Hey, mate, we don’t have this currency, we need a partner. But not that big, preferably financial institutions and not banks, since traditional banks are not that cheap.” If they said this shit, remember: no fancy international banks that give you debits for 250,000 US dollars per year. Your company said it really easy to understand: no fancy shit, real cheap, good service. Your job is not to impress your CEO with a logo from a skyscraper in London or New York. Your job is to solve the problem. If the mandate is lean and efficient, don’t come back with luxury and prestige. Prestige doesn’t pay the margin — execution does. And don’t romanticize big names. Big names love big fees, long onboarding, and zero flexibility. Sometimes the real killers in the market are smaller, faster, hungrier institutions that actually value your flow. Your ego might want to say, “We partnered with a Tier-1 bank.” But your P&L might scream, “Why the fuck did you do that?” Listen to the numbers, not to your ego.
Network
The second most important thing is your network of contacts, your database of important people. A negotiator in a company who sends requests for partnerships using the #1 most famous corporate email address like info@company.com or whatever just wastes the time of any MSB, EMI, PSP, PIS, or whoever receives that shit. What the fuck is even that? The company hired you not to send requests via generic email addresses — you gotta have your own shit in place. A name, a direct line, a presence. When people see a generic inbox, they feel zero accountability. Real deals are made between real humans, not between shared mailboxes.
Your network is not just a list of contacts. It’s your capital. It’s your leverage. It’s your speed. If every new partnership requires you to “research from scratch,” you are already behind. Build relationships before you need them. Talk to people without immediate benefit. Because one day, when liquidity tightens or a partner exits, your saved contact from two years ago might save your entire quarter.
Another important thing is your level of openness. Each negotiator who represents a company, a bank, or any financial institution should have a policy in place that gives others the necessary open gates to reach out. What kind of negotiator are you if people cannot even find your email address or phone number because you hid it?
Make Sure
What kind of negotiator are you if you are not even present digitally for people to text you without barriers? I remember business development managers, relationship officers, treasury negotiators who put a setting that doesn’t allow others on LinkedIn to connect with them unless they know their email address as verification. Do you think this way clients and partners will easily find you? Or how about closed accounts on X? I wonder how these people call themselves negotiators or diplomats when the only good thing they can do on the Internet is hide and be private. The life of a negotiator in the digital space cannot be closed. Once you have social networks, you gotta make your contacts public for opportunities to find you. Because not always — physically and mentally — will you be able to chase every opportunity yourself. Sometimes you gotta allow the deal to find you. Visibility creates probability. The more reachable you are, the more surface area you give to luck. And in finance, luck is often disguised as “unexpected inbound.” Of course you filter, of course you manage time, but hiding is not a strategy. Hiding is fear. And fear has no place in global negotiations.
Third, and most important — and probably the last — once you find your partner to work with on a specific business relationship, always make sure of two things: go down with the prices, whatever it takes, and make sure they are your clients too, not just partners who provide services to you. The first one — bringing the costs down — is important because you cannot always guarantee they are truthful about the prices. They might just think you and your company are like everyone else and give you the price they think is appropriate. But if you know the prices are bullshit, don’t stay idle. Don’t smile politely. Say it openly. Challenge it. Respectfully, but firmly. Negotiation is not begging; it’s calibration of value.
The Land of Ajam
''And remember: the first price is almost never the real price. It’s a test. They test your awareness, your desperation, your alternatives. If you accept too fast, you signal weakness. If you negotiate blindly without data, you signal incompetence. The sweet spot is informed pressure — knowing the market benchmarks and calmly pushing until the numbers make sense.'' — Eraj Alisherov, The Patriot
Final Warning
''The second one — making sure they are also your clients — is important to keep them engaged and to bring you profit twice: first for them being your partners, second for them being your clients buying your services. That creates interdependence. In the financial world, all relations have an end. You can have correspondent relations with a specific bank or financial institution, but eventually either one of you goes broke, gets merged, or, because of conflict of interests over prices, you part ways. Sometimes the most positive outcome is that you both don’t like each other’s operations and decide to find a better alternative. That’s business. Nothing personal.''
— Eraj Alisherov, The Patriot
Interdependence buys time. When both sides earn, both sides tolerate more friction. When only one side earns, the clock is ticking from day one. Build relationships where both parties have skin in the game. That’s how you survive audits, compliance waves, market crashes, and internal politics.
Your task as a negotiator in that case is to make sure such things happen after a long period of time, not right away. You gotta build the foundation really strong so that the partnership makes sense beyond a single quarter or a single transaction. Structure it so that walking away hurts both sides a little. That’s when you know you built something real. Durability is the real KPI. Anyone can close a deal. Not everyone can maintain one for five years under pressure. If your partnerships collapse quickly, it’s either bad alignment, bad structuring, or bad expectation management. A strong negotiator thinks not only about closing, but about sustaining.
Incomplete SWIFT Information
Delays Due to Time Zone and Operational Misalignment
