Developing the Implementation Approach for the Cross-Border Payments Targets: Final report

The G20 made enhancing cross-border payments a priority during the Saudi Arabian Presidency in 2020. The targets define the Roadmap’s ambition and create accountability. In November 2020, the G20 endorsed the roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments, which the FSB developed in coordination with the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and other international organisations and standard-setting bodies. A foundational step in the Roadmap was the setting of quantitative global targets for addressing the four the challenges faced by cross-border payments: cost, speed, transparency and access. To create accountability and maintain momentum, the FSB committed to develop a framework for monitoring progress toward the targets using key performance indicators (KPIs) against which future progress would be measured.

This report provides an update on the FSB’s development of this framework, initially set out in an interim report, published in July 2022. Developing a monitoring approach in line with the principles has been challenging. The cross-border payments ecosystem is complex, multi-layered and made up of a wide variety of end-users, payment service providers, and infrastructures, all of which leads to fragmented and heterogeneous potential data sources. As such, comprehensive data sources do not already exist that would support the calculation of global KPIs that are representative of the overall market and that also provide regional or corridor-level granularity.

The report provides a high-level overview of the main data sources; a more detailed discussion of each KPI and, when able, the data underlying its calculation, including material gaps; the approach to operationalising the monitoring exercise; and next steps. In developing the monitoring framework, the FSB has adopted adjustments to the definitions of the wholesale and retail market segments.

Given the lack of pre-existing indicators and the need for further discussions and collaboration with potential data providers to develop reliable estimates, this final report on the implementation approach is not able to provide yet a full set of estimates of current performance. Developing reliable estimates of current performance of cross-border payments based on the KPIs will take several more months to further develop and will be published once available.

Following this work to define the KPIs and identify the main data sources, the next stage will be to work with the proposed data providers to develop current estimates of the KPIs and establish the processes for ongoing monitoring

Despite the constraints of imperfect data sources, the FSB believes the KPIs can provide informative estimates of progress toward meeting the targets, which will help to maintain momentum toward, and accountability for, achieving the targets. A more technical methodology document will also be developed, for publication alongside the first publication of data.