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What will it take to make cross-border payments as easy, quick, inexpensive and transparent as domestic payments? The debate continues.

Trillions upon trillions of journeys are made by money every day. Domestic payment schemes are largely quick and efficient. Recently however, priorities have shifted to focus on cross-border transactions, driven by increased investment in digital, new fintech companies, efforts from incumbent banks and the introduction of instant payment infrastructures in countries across the world. Global trade, the rise of digital, and the internet have increased pressure to improve the process that many view as slow, expensive, opaque, cumbersome and, for some people, inaccessible.

Part of these efforts is the adoption of the data rich, XML-based ISO 20022 messaging standard. While the industry is embarking on a broader, global rollout of the ISO 20022 standard, how close is the industry to achieving cross-border statistics that match most domestic payments schemes?

At the regional level, cross-border and multi-currency payment schemes and systems have been successfully launched, such as the Single Euro Payments Area and P27, which aims to establish a single pan-Nordic payments infrastructure. Swift, which launched Swift gpi in 2017 and is now used by more than 4000 financial institutions, found that on average, 44% of Swift gpi payments are credited to end beneficiaries within five minutes, more than 58% within 30 minutes, 79% within six hours, almost 100% within 24 hours. These statistics seem to fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that cross-border payments take too long.

But where are we heading with global cross-border efficiencies? Is creating a so-called ‘Single Global Payments Area’ a viable solution to cross-border issues and an achievable goal, or should it even be a goal at all?

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