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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) announced further steps to promote the adoption of its harmonized ISO 20022 data requirements for more efficient processing of cross-border payments. A panel of global ISO 20022 market practice groups will be established in early 2025 to support the regular maintenance of the data requirements. Second, the CPMI is encouraging industry to develop global ISO 20022 market practice guidelines for fast payments based on the harmonized data requirements. Third, the CPMI will continue to engage with payment system operators and payment service providers to encourage them to implement the harmonized data requirements by end-2027.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published two Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) reports that offer key insights and recommendations on the interlinking and interoperability of payment systems to enhance cross-border payments. The first report discusses design choices and the risk implications of interlinked fast payment systems (FPSs) and the role of application programming interfaces (APIs), setting out the key decisions for governance and outlines recommendations for their oversight. The second report presents ten recommendations to promote the harmonization of APIs to enhance cross-border payments. https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d223.htm https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/d224.htm

This commentary looks at the payments landscape through the lens of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) 2019 Red Book statistics. It shows how consumers are increasingly shifting from physical to digital instruments, promoting efficient, faster and more convenient payments. However, cash, and in some jurisdictions, other paper-based payments such as cheques remain important payment instruments. In more than half of the CPMI jurisdictions, "cash is still king" and its circulation continues to grow. In the same time frame, more than half of the CPMI countries have experienced a switch from physical payment instruments to digital payments.

The Bank for International Settlements is opening a consultation on the propsect of extending and aligning payment system operating hours to improve cross-border payments. The consultative report from the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) focuses on the operating hours of real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems. The CPMI says an extension of RTGS operating hours across jurisdictions could help address current obstacles, thereby increasing the speed of cross-border payments and reducing liquidity costs and settlement risks.

The CPMI published a consultative report on initial considerations on governance and oversight for fast payment system (FPS) interlinking across borders. The interlinking of FPS is one of the most promising solutions for enhancing cross-border payments, offering the prospect of significantly faster, cheaper, more accessible and transparent cross-border payments. The interim report describes 10 initial considerations, resulting from a series of workshops with global stakeholders that was undertaken by the CPMI to better understand the sensitivities, complexities and experiences in this area.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published a brief that highlights key payment trends as observed in the 2022 Red Book statistics (available at the BIS Data Portal). These statistics were collected in the second half of 2023 from CPMI member jurisdictions. The use of digital payment methods continues to increase, particularly for small amounts. In tandem, cash withdrawals and the number of small-denomination banknotes in circulation have declined. Fast payments reached new heights and are a prominent driver of the digitalisation of countries' payment ecosystems. Even so, consumers continue to use cash to pay at home and abroad: both cross-border card and e-money payments and cross-border cash withdrawals increased sharply in 2022. (Data portal: https://data.bis.org/topics?topicFilter=CPMI)

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published for public consultation preliminary guidance that confirms and clarifies that systemically-important stablecoin arrangements (SAs) should observe international standards for payment, clearing and settlement systems. The report proposes additional guidance on how certain aspects of the CPMI/IOSCO Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMIs) apply to the novel features of SAs.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published its work program and strategic priorities for its 2024/25. The program's key themes include the enhancement of cross-border payments, with a particular emphasis on the interlinking of fast payment systems, and digital innovations in payments, clearing and settlement. The latter will include tokenization in the context of money and payments, functionality of cross-border central bank digital currencies and central bank collaboration, and multicurrency and asset-linked stablecoin arrangements. https://www.bis.org/press/p240523.htm

In October 2020, the G20 leaders endorsed the roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments. To monitor progress, the CPMI launched in 2023 a monitoring survey among central banks on the updated roadmap's three priority themes: (i) payment system interoperability and extension; (ii) data exchange and message standards; and (iii) legal, regulatory and supervisory frameworks. This report presents the survey findings for each of the priority themes. Respondents provided information on operational or planned real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems, fast payment systems (FPS) and deferred net settlement (DNS) systems within their jurisdiction. These include payment systems owned and operated by the public sector as well as the major private systems.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published a summary of the high-level findings of a July 2024 conference on expediting the interlinking of fast payment systems (FPSs). It found that emerging markets and developing economies have made considerable progress in fast payment adoption. As the number of domestic FPSs grow, opportunities are emerging to facilitate the cross-border interlinking of safe and efficient FPS. Work is under way in many jurisdictions to enhance FPS readiness to participate in such links, particularly to improve their functionality and align with messaging and compliance standards. Successful links to date have prioritized interoperability and smoothly managed coordination between the public and private sectors and among jurisdictions. It is expected that FPS links in the near term will be based on bilateral links, while over the longer term, these may coexist with more open and future-proof multilateral arrangements. Over time, the market will likely evolve to link between regional groupings (see https://www.bis.org/cpmi/publ/brief5.htm).

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and World Bank published a report on payment aspects of financial inclusion. It provides tools for helping national authorities undertake diagnostic studies and to measure and track progress in enhancing access to, and use of, transaction accounts. The tools allow comparisons with international benchmarks and/or with a jurisdiction's own situation over time, and make it easier to follow reform efforts in the area of financial inclusion from a payments perspective. The CPMI and the World Bank note that these tools are dynamic and will evolve and/or need to be updated over time to accommodate new emerging market practices and other relevant innovations.

The crypto press has discovered that Ripple is part of a task force convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) cross-border payments interoperability and extension (PIE) task force. That does seem to be a big deal, because Ripple has been persona non grata in any international forums in which the US government plays a key role, on account of the firm's ongoing legal dispute between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It's why you haven't seen much, if any engagement between Ripple and any G20 central banks since the legal dispute started in 2020. https://www.bis.org/cpmi/cross_border/events.htm

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), the BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank published a paper on challenges to addressing and approaching the establishment of a multilateral cross-border payments platform. Such a platform could reduce the need for intermediaries and allow payment service providers in different jurisdictions to transact directly with each other. Two paths are examined - the growth approach that involves expanding existing multilateral platforms to additional jurisdictions, currencies and participants, and the greenfield approach that involves building a new, potentially global, infrastructure for cross-border payments.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published a report  on central bank liquidity bridges -  short-term intraday liquidity arrangement set up between two or more central banks. In a liquidity bridge, collateral held by a payment service provider (PSP) with one central bank can be used by a PSP's related entity in another jurisdiction to get intraday liquidity from that other central bank. Liquidity bridges may help reduce credit and settlement risks to PSPs arising from FX transactions and reduce intraday settlement risk across borders.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published an article that provides an update on a workstream of the G20 cross-border payments program focused on the harmonization of ISO 20022 for enhancing cross-border payments. Most of the world's payment systems will adopt ISO 20022 by 2025, when SWIFT will discontinue its support of the current MT (message type/text) standard for cross-border payments. Hence the coming years will be crucial for converging on a harmonized use of the messaging standard to fully leverage its potential to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper and more transparent.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published a report that provides a framework to help payment system operators and authorities understand and evaluate the benefits, challenges and risks of interlinking arrangements. It also provides an overview of important trends in interlinking arrangements and adoption of application programming interfaces (APIs) by payment systems. Interlinking arrangements allow banks and other payment service providers to transact with each other without requiring them to participate in the same payment system or use intermediaries. Such arrangements can shorten transaction chains, reduce overall costs and increase the transparency and speed of payments.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published their final "same risk, same regulation" guidance on regulating stablecoin arrangements (SAs). The guidance highlights that the transfer function of an SA is comparable to the transfer function performed by other types of financial market infrastructure (FMI). As a result, an SA that performs this transfer function is considered an FMI for the purpose of applying the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI) and, if determined by relevant authorities to be systemically important, the SA as a whole would be expected to observe all relevant principles in the PFMI.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published harmonized ISO 20022 data requirements that establish a consistent minimum set of messaging standards for more efficient processing of cross-border payments. They will facilitate the straight through processing of end-to-end payments, making them faster and more reliable.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published a report on considerations and challenges regarding the use of stablecoin arrangements in cross-border payments. The paper acknowledges it's possible that stablecoins might cut costs, speed up payments, encourage competition and improve transparency, no stablecoin arrangements yet exist that are deemed to be properly designed and regulated and fully compliant with all relevant regulatory requirements. Further, even if such stablecoin arrangements did exist and could help to address specific cross-border payment frictions, they might not necessarily positively impact cross-border payments as the drawbacks could outweigh any potential benefits.

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published the final report on the facilitation of increased adoption of payment versus payment (PvP) to reduce foreign exchange (FX) settlement risk and improve cross-border payments. It analyses the causes of non-PvP settlement, takes stock of existing and proposed new PvP solutions and suggests roles for the private and public sectors to facilitate increased adoption of PvP. The report finds that existing PvP arrangements have been successful at reducing settlement risk for much of the FX market, but certain market segments remain exposed to risk: PvP arrangements are not available for all currencies and may not be the preferred solution of some market participants or for settling certain trades. New PvP solutions can complement the existing arrangements by providing flexibility and functionalities such as real-time settlement or 24/7 operations, expanding coverage to the retail market, and supporting emerging market currencies.