On 9 October 2023, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) published its inaugural annual report on key performance indicators (KPIs) for meeting the targets for cross-border payments and a consolidated report on progress under the FSB’s Roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments.
The Roadmap was endorsed by the G20 in 2020 and provides a high-level plan designed to address the frictions that lead to four challenges that cross-border payments face relative to domestic payments: high transaction costs; slow end to-end processing times; limited access for users accessing payment service providers (PSPs) as well as PSPs accessing payment systems and other arrangements; and limited transparency about costs, speed, processing chains and payment status for end-users and PSPs alike.
Earlier this year the FSB published a report setting out priority actions for achieving the G20 targets for enhancing cross-border payments. The report synthesised the lessons learnt during the first two years of the Roadmap, including feedback from stakeholders, and focused the next phase of work on three interrelated priority themes: payment system interoperability and extension; legal, regulatory and supervisory finalising frameworks; and cross-border data exchange and message standards.
The reports now published are complementary. The first set of KPIs set out in the inaugural KPI report establish a baseline of the state of cross-border payments relative to the targets set for achieving cheaper, faster, more transparent, and more accessible cross-border payments. The consolidated report sets out the key insights from the KPI report; the progress that has been made on priority actions set out in the FSB report published earlier this year; and some examples of concrete improvements that have been made or that are in progress.