International payments

, Building trust and transparency is the next goal for cross-border payments

Client expectations have changed fundamentally, for understandable reasons. Corporates can track their international shipments at every stage of the supply chain, and when their executives get home they even track their food deliveries. Yet when making an international payment, many still have limited visibility over where their money is or when it will arrive.

The payment industry should now focus on giving customers the same certainty and visibility around their payments. That certainty also extends to cost: clients want to know upfront what a payment will cost, including any fees and foreign-exchange charges, and how much the beneficiary will ultimately receive.

The benefits of these priorities are clear – for one, increased transparency helps clients make better-informed decisions when comparing the costs between different providers or banks. And ultimately, traceability is foundational to establishing trust.

Fintech providers have helped raise expectations around what that experience should look like. The appeal of their platforms is not that they are always the cheapest option, but that they have often made the payment experience simpler and more transparent, giving customers greater certainty around cost, status and delivery. In doing so, they have built trust, which clients are willing to pay for.

For financial institutions, that trust has another important dimension: security. As payments become faster and more immediate, fraud and cybercrime risks also become more acute, making the security and resilience of the underlying payment rails all the more important.

Recent years have seen progress, but significant hurdles remain

Recent years have brought meaningful progress towards a more transparent and predictable cross-border payment experience. ISO 20022 provides an important foundation, creating a richer and more structured data environment that supports greater transparency, automation and interoperability across payment systems.

Swift GPI shows what greater visibility can mean in practice. Its unique end-to-end transaction reference (UETR) allows payments to be tracked across the correspondent banking network, giving customers greater visibility over where a payment is and when it has been completed.

But tracking a payment is only part of the equation. Customers also need confidence that it will arrive when expected and on the terms they were promised. One remaining source of friction is the “last mile”: even where the international leg of a payment moves quickly, final delivery can still be slowed by domestic clearing arrangements, legacy batch-processing infrastructure or compliance processes.

A number of initiatives are seeking to make that end-to-end experience more predictable. One-Leg-Out models can extend the benefits of domestic instant-payment systems to one leg of a cross-border transaction, while bilateral and multilateral initiatives are also being developed to connect domestic systems across borders.

SWIFT’s new cross-border payments scheme, SWIFT Scheme, approaches the same challenge from another direction. By introducing common rules and service levels around areas such as fees, foreign exchange, transaction tracking and full-value delivery, the aim is not simply to move payments faster, but to make the experience more consistent and predictable for customers.

Complexity is growing as new payment rails emerge

Yet despite these advances, the latest G20 progress assessment in April 2026 reports that satisfactory global improvements appear unlikely to be achieved within the Roadmap's original 2027 timetable. This reality makes it all the more critical for leading financial institutions to take proactive steps, co-creating pragmatic, interim solutions that bridge these systemic gaps for our clients today.

Part of the challenge is that improving the underlying infrastructure does not automatically translate into change for customers. Corporate payment infrastructure can be complex and difficult to adapt, in part because large multinationals often operate across multiple ERP and legacy systems, while others may lack the IT resources needed to implement change. In both cases, upgrading payment infrastructure may not be at the top of the investment agenda when existing processes are still functioning – one reason why the adoption of standards such as ISO 20022 has come as more of an evolution than a revolution. Financial institutions therefore need to demonstrate a tangible business case for change – whether through improved liquidity management, lower operational costs or a better overall payment experience.

At the same time, the payments landscape itself is becoming more complex. The future of cross-border payments is unlikely to be dominated by a single universal rail. This is particularly relevant to underserved markets, where de-risking by transaction banks has reduced correspondent banking relationships. Regulated stablecoins, tokenised commercial bank money, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could offer alternative routes where traditional infrastructure is less mature. The presence of newer rails only serves to underline the importance of trust and transparency. These rails cannot simply achieve greater access by lowering the standards applied to security and compliance - they must seamlessly integrate into established global regulatory standards.

Traditional correspondent banking, instant-payment networks and emerging forms of digital money may each have a role to play depending on the market, transaction and client need.

For corporates, however, greater choice should not mean greater complexity. Clients should not need to understand the intricacies of every underlying rail in order to make a payment. What matters is receiving a consistent experience – with the same level of confidence around security, transparency and execution – regardless of how the payment ultimately moves.

The bank's role: Solving complexity and orchestrating payments behind the scenes

The role of financial institutions is likely to become one of trusted orchestrators. As the number of available payment rails grows, the complexity should rest with banks to resolve behind the scenes. Clients should be able to initiate a payment through whatever channel is most convenient – an API, online banking interface or mobile application.

Payments may even come to be initiated by agentic AI in the near future, operating within strictly governed, secure parameters. As the trusted orchestrator, the bank bridges these automated front ends with robust risk frameworks. By evaluating both the characteristics of the available networks and the customer’s needs, the bank selects the appropriate route and ensures the payment remains secure and transparent throughout its journey.

Corporates have become accustomed to seeing cross-border payment flows as similar to freight trains: reliable, but prone to delays. In future, payments could move more like traffic on an autobahn – swiftly and seamlessly across borders. Banks have a key role to play in making this smoother journey a reality.