Payments and Market Infrastructure
The Global Risks Alliance (GRA)
Cross-border payments are slower, costlier and less transparent than domestic ones. They pass through chains of correspondent banks, different messaging formats, time zones and compliance checks. The G20 roadmap set targets for cost, speed, access and transparency. This page sets out how cross-border payment frictions and risks arise, how they are measured, and who decides.
GRA · In development · service level R0
Cross-border payments are transfers of money between countries, often through chains of correspondent banks, different messaging formats and compliance checks, which make them slower and costlier than domestic payments. The G20 roadmap sets targets for improvement. Central banks, operators, banks and standard setters hold the decisions.
How a failure at one financial centre can spread through settlement links. Design links, not real dependencies.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Cross border payments · RTGS system · Business day 163
Interoperability and failure modes. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Each bank in a correspondent chain adds fees, time and compliance checks. Fewer correspondents in some corridors mean higher costs and less access.
Incompatible messaging formats truncate data, causing manual repairs and compliance hits. ISO 20022 adoption aims to carry richer, consistent data.
Anti-money laundering and sanctions checks are repeated along the chain. De-risking by banks withdraws services from whole corridors.
Linking domestic instant payment systems across borders can cut cost and time, but needs agreement on governance, rules, liquidity and settlement.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Correspondent banking | An arrangement where one bank provides accounts and payment services to another, often abroad. |
| De-risking | Banks ending relationships with whole categories of clients or regions to avoid risk rather than manage it. |
| Fast payment system interlinking | Connecting domestic instant payment systems so payments can flow across borders. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average cost of sending remittances | percent of amount sent | quarterly | World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide | OFFICIAL |
| Share of payments credited within one hour | percent | annual | FSB progress reports and SWIFT data | REPORTED |
| Active correspondent relationships | count by corridor | annual | CPMI correspondent banking data | OFFICIAL |
| ISO 20022 adoption in payment systems | count of systems migrated | annual | Operator records | DECLARED |
| Fast payment systems with cross-border links | count | annual | BIS and operator records | REPORTED |
| Progress against G20 targets | status by target | annual | FSB progress reports | OFFICIAL |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide | Cost of remittances by corridor | CC BY 4.0 |
| FSB annual progress reports on the G20 cross-border payments roadmap | Progress and key performance indicators | Free, FSB terms |
| CPMI correspondent banking data | Trends in correspondent relationships | Free, BIS terms |
| BIS Innovation Hub project reports | Experiments such as interlinking fast payments | Free, BIS terms |
| SWIFT gpi statistics | Speed and tracking of cross-border payments | Free to read, terms to check |
Payments and Market Infrastructure prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Central banks and payment system operators | Whether and how to link systems across borders | Interlinking experiments and governance options |
| Banks and payment service providers | Which corridors to serve and through which arrangements | Cost, compliance and volume evidence |
| Regulators and standard setters | How to align data and compliance requirements | Roadmap progress and data evidence |
| The FSB and CPMI | How to track and adjust the roadmap | Key performance indicator data |
International trade, remittances to families and humanitarian transfers depend on cross-border payments. Many countries rely on a small number of correspondent relationships, which have declined in some regions, leaving them more exposed. International efforts to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, more transparent and more accessible are under way, and they raise new questions about interoperability and operational resilience.
Cross-border payments depend on correspondent chains, system links and common standards.
Banks hold accounts with each other across borders. Long chains add cost, delay and points of failure.
Links between national fast payment systems and multi-currency platforms can shorten chains but create new dependencies.
Common message standards improve data quality and screening. Transitions between standards create operational risk.
Efforts to interlink national fast payment systems offer a way to shorten chains, but they also connect the operational risks of each system to the others. A disruption in one could affect payments across the link, and differences in rules, hours and dispute processes must be reconciled. Resilience planning for interlinked systems is still developing and benefits from shared industry understanding.
Study of payment routes and costs between country pairs, from published data.
Aggregated data on correspondent relationships. Detailed data are held by banks and authorities.
Review of technical and legal interoperability between systems, applying payment and financial market technology.
Published disruptions to cross-border flows and their causes.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.