Remitly announced on May 12, 2026, that Remitly Business added two new features for U.S. small and mid-sized business customers, Bulk Payments and Send by Link, and reached general availability for SMBs in Canada. The cross-border payments business has cleared more than 20,000 customers and grown send volume by more than 30 percent quarter over quarter in Q1 2026.
For self-employed pros who pay overseas contractors, source goods abroad, or invoice Canadian clients, the rollout is a real-world cost-and-time question. Bulk Payments lets a single transaction settle dozens of recipient payouts at once, and Send by Link removes the need to collect contractors’ bank details before sending money.
What The New Features Actually Do
Bulk Payments lets customers select multiple international recipients from a list and review delivery speeds, fees, and totals for each payment in a single approval view. The workflow replaces the manual single-recipient grind that most freelancers and microbusinesses use today across PayPal, Wise, and traditional wire transfers.
Send by Link generates a shareable payout link that recipients open to enter their own bank or wallet details. That shifts the data-entry burden onto the recipient and removes the back-and-forth of collecting routing numbers and tax forms before the first invoice settles.
Why Canada GA Matters For Self-Employed Pros
Remitly Business is now generally available to small and mid-sized businesses in Canada following the company’s registration approval under Canada’s Retail Payment Activities Act. The platform supports Interac e-Transfers, payouts to major Canadian bank accounts, and Canadian debit and credit card funding.
For U.S. self-employed pros with Canadian clients or contractors, Canadian GA means a single rail can collect CAD invoices, hold balances, and disburse to U.S. accounts without three intermediaries shaving the margin. The friction of cross-border B2B has been a perennial complaint for solopreneur agencies, video editors, and consultants who pick up Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver clients on referral.
What Self-Employed Pros Should Do Next
The first move is to compare Remitly Business’s per-transaction pricing and FX spread against your current rails, which for most U.S. self-employed are PayPal, Wise, and the occasional wire. Cross-border payments hide most of their cost in the FX margin, not the headline transfer fee, so run two or three test transactions before switching.
The second step is to update vendor and contractor records to ensure Send by Link compatibility. The feature reduces onboarding friction the most when contractors are confirmed as recipients in advance rather than chased mid-project, which mirrors the cleaner contractor onboarding pattern seen on the Rivermate EOR platform.
What To Watch Next
Remitly has flagged cross-border B2B payments as a $20 trillion global opportunity, which signals more product launches for SMBs and microbusinesses in the back half of 2026. The next likely additions are invoicing, scheduled payouts, and deeper integrations with QuickBooks and Xero to match the workflow patterns of one-person agencies and consultancies.
The wider market context is that Stripe, Wise, and PayPal are all sharpening their SMB cross-border feature sets at once. Self-employed pros should expect feature-parity battles to drive FX spreads down over the next two quarters, a rare moment of genuine consumer surplus in payments.
Photo by Hermes Rivera: Unsplash
