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Pix by Proximity has been introduced by the Central bank of Brazil, available to Google digital wallet users and with a broader rollout to all Pix users set for February 2025. According to the announcement, this contactless payment system will allow users to pay by simply placing their phones near a payment terminal (similar to a card machine), using bank accounts linked to Google Wallet. Developed in partnership with Rede Itaú and tested on their terminals, this solution is available to any payment acquirers in the market. To make a payment, the user only needs to unlock their phone, bring it close to the recipient's NFC-enabled terminal, and follow the on-screen steps.

The European Central Bank (ECB) will launch initiatives to help improve cross-border payments within the European Union (EU) and beyond, building on the Eurosystem's TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service. This will include allowing instant payments originating in one TIPS currency to be settled in another TIPS currency and in central bank money, starting with euro, Swedish kronor and Danish krone. The project will also explore linking TIPS with other fast payment systems, include developing links with partners outside the EU.

McKinsey published its 2024 Global Payments Report which documents the continuing displacement of cash and checks by instant payments, especially in developing markets with low credit and debit card penetration. Despite the underwhelming uptake of retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) where they have been launched or piloted, McKinsey foresees them setting the minimum base level of functionality, cost, and services that users can expect from a digital currency, providing an alternative to help keep the price of commercial offerings in check, and serving as an alternative to large private-sector stablecoins.

The BIS published a paper that sheds light on how fast payment systems (FPSs) influence the diffusion of digital finance apps, based on a rich dataset on app downloads and use for 86,163 apps in 95 countries over 2012-22. It identifies various mechanisms through which FPS drive finance app adoption, like stimulating competition and innovation in payments, fostering digital finance adoption via learning effects and expanding access to financial services, particularly in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) and low income countries (LICs). This effect is particularly evident for apps by technological disrupters, such as fintechs or big techs, relative to those of incumbent financial institutions. Finally, we identify some characteristics of FPS that further amplify digital finance adoption such as the active role of the central bank, open membership and real-time settlement.

"A few lines buried in the legal terms for the FedNow service, which is now live, create an important opportunity for digital wallet and payment app providers. While the new FedNow legal regime creates significant business opportunities for all players in this space, emerging nonbank payment providers may have the most to gain from this change. Early-stage startup founders and investors in particular should take note. These provisions allow nonbank providers access to FedNow under a remarkably open approach, with only a few requirements imposed on their relationships with customers and a back-end bank. The effect is to allow these nonbank providers to increase their reach beyond their own user base (as they are limited today) and potentially also enable payment flows across other apps and wallets and payment networks."

Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP), in collaboration withe the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), signed an agreement with India's National Payments Corporation to implement a retail payments platform in Peru, similar India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform. UPI is a real-time payment platform, available 24/7, that allows users to link multiple bank accounts in their mobile applications and pay through cell phone number, QR codes and virtual payment addresses.

[March 7, 2024] Qatar Central Bank (QCB) launched its instant 24/7 payment service 'FAWRAN', in continuation of QCB's efforts to develop the infrastructure of payment systems and keep pace with the latest developments in the field of payment systems and electronic transfer of funds. FAWRAN also facilitates financial and commercial transactions between the bank accounts of individuals and companies. FAWRAN will enable the sender to verify the name of the beneficiary (addressee) before completing the transfer process, and ease of use through the banks' mobile phone applications, in addition to the use of alternative identifiers that are easier to identify the beneficiary such as (mobile phone number, alias) instead of the international account number (IBAN).

The Central Bank of the States of West Africa (BCEAO) has launched the pilot phase of the interoperable instant payment system (IPS) of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA). 25 financial institutions across four countries met the criteria required to participate. A second group will join the pilot on August 12, 2024.The new interoperable 24/7 IPS infrastructure is capable of processing transactions of any kind, regardless of the account type.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) joined Project Nexus, a multilateral international initiative to enable instant cross-border retail payments by interlinking domestic fast payment systems (FPSs). Nexus, conceptualized by the BIS Innovation Hub aims to connect the FPSs of four ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand); and now India. Indonesia, which has been involved from the early stages, continues to be involved as a special observer. The platform is expected to go live by 2026. Once functional, Nexus will play an important role in making retail cross-border payments efficient, faster, and more cost effective.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper that analyzes how retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and fast payment systems (FPSs) compare with each other and why some jurisdictions have opted for a retail CBDC, while others have chosen to introduce an FPS or both. Interviews with central banks in 14 jurisdictions around the world show that some see a case for both to fulfil different policy goals and complement one another. The paper's key conclusion is that the choice between a retail CBDC or an FPS, or both, is very contextual and will depend on the market features, ecosystem and degree of maturity and innovation of existing payment infrastructures in a country.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper on the insights and lessons learned from a range of fast payment systems (FPS). Over 100 jurisdictions worldwide, including 15 jurisdictions in Latin America, have implemented FPS. The first, overview chapter draws out general insights from experiences in the Americas, such as on the impact of fast payments on financial inclusion, the role of central banks and domestic and cross-border interoperability. The next chapter looks in greater depth at Pix in Brazil, and its complementarities with other means of payment. A further chapter dives into the experiences of SINPE Móvil in Costa Rica, including the impact on banks. The final chapter explores the experience of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in India.

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).

"More consumers and businesses than ever before benefited from real-time payments on the RTP® network in 2024, the largest instant payments system in the United States operated by The Clearing House. In 2024, payment value on the network jumped 94% from the previous year, logging in at $246 billion, while volume surged 38% to 343 million transactions. Additionally, the network heads into 2025 having experienced a record 98 million transactions valued at $80 billion in Q4 2024, representing 12% volume growth and a 16% increase in value from Q3. "

"The National Bank of Cambodia recently published its annual report, disclosing continued growth in the Bakong blockchain-based payment systems. Payment volumes of $104.81 billion during 2024 represent 330% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP). There are now around 30 million Bakong wallets, a figure that is 1.69 times the population. In terms of acceptance, 4.5 million merchants can receive payments because there's a standard QR code method supported for multiple payment types. While sometimes described as a central bank digital currency (CBDC), because it was set up by the central bank, Bakong is closer to a tokenized deposit initiative. Bakong currency balances are backed by accounts at commercial banks."

The East African Community (EAC) Draft Cross-Border Payment System Masterplan was validated by its eight member countries (Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania). The Masterplan aims to enhance the speed, security, affordability and integration of payment systems across the region. It tackles key obstacles such as fragmented regulations, high transaction costs, and limited interoperability by outlining twenty targeted initiatives. These include a regional instant retail payment switch, and exploring using central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) for regional transactions.

A paper published by Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) shows that instant payment systems (IPSs) may have the unintended consequences of increasing the banking sector's demand for liquidity. Using administrative banking data and transaction-level payment data from Brazil's Pix, one of the most widely adopted instant payment systems, it finds that banks increased their liquid asset holdings after the adoption of instant payments. These findings arise because the convenience of instant payments to consumers comes at the expense of banks' ability to delay and net payment flows. The inability to delay payments increases banks' demand for holding liquid assets over transforming illiquid ones.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payment and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) published a brief that highlights key retail payment trends based on 2023 data collected from member jurisdictions. It demonstrates that the use, or volume, of cashless payment methods continued to grow in 2023 and that consumers increasingly choose to pay digitally for small value transactions. Although broad based, the growth in cashless payments was especially strong in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), driven by a sharp increase in the use of credit transfers (mostly fast payments) and e-money. It also finds that the uptake of fast payments is generally higher in jurisdictions with lower levels of cash in circulation and wider use of payment cards, especially for small payments. However, the demand for cash withdrawals generally remained stable compared with previous years.

The European Payments Initiative (EPI) is an initiative backed by 16 European banks and financial services companies to progressively build Wero, a payment solution tailored for Europe. EPI leverages the instant account-to-account payments infrastructure available in Europe to improve efficiency and remove intermediaries in the payment flow. It aims at enabling next-generation payments for consumers and merchants in Europe across all types of retail transactions. EPI will initially support person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-professional (P2Pro) payments, followed by online and mobile shopping payments and then point-of-sale payments.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published an update on Project Rialto, which is exploring connecting instant payment systems (IPSs) across borders using central bank money (CBM) on a tokenized platform and an automated foreign exchange (FX) conversion layer. Such integration raises some specific challenges and design considerations, which will be addressed in the development phase and form an integral part of the project's contributions to improving cross-border payments. This report identifies the main policy and technical aspects to be considered, with the next steps being to develop at proof of concept.

The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is a Pan-African real-time gross settlement (RTGS) infrastructure for cross-border payments in distinct local currencies. It was publicly launched on January 13, 2022, by the African Union (AU) and the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) to compliment trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). PAPSS works in collaboration with central banks in the continent to provide a payment and settlement service to which commercial banks, payment service providers and fintech organizations across the continent can connect as participants. Currently, the PAPSS network consists of 15 central banks, 12 switches, and 51 commercial banks.