Cross-border payments: Are global targets measuring what businesses need?

Global targets have helped drive improvements in international payments. But a new report published by The Payments Association (UK& EU) on Tuesday questions whether the measures capture what matters to businesses: the total cost, when funds reach the recipient and how safely they get there.

Progress towards faster, cheaper international payments risks obscuring the delays and costs customers still face, according to the report Rethinking Cross-border Payments Targets developed with cross-border payments infrastructure provider Payall. The report calls for greater scrutiny of the complete payment journey and performance on individual payment routes, and also recommends making safety and security an explicit part of the international framework.

At its heart is a distinction between improving the infrastructure that moves money and improving the experience of those using it. A payment system can perform better against particular measures without delivering a sufficiently faster, cheaper or more predictable service to customers.

The Financial Stability Board established the targets in 2021 as part of a G20-backed effort to make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, more accessible and more transparent. Most are due to be met by the end of 2027. The Payments Association recognises the progress made, but argues that global averages cannot adequately show where payments remain expensive or slow.

According to figures cited in the report, 18.3 percent of monitored payment corridors still had average retail payment costs above the FSB’s 3 percent threshold in 2025, down from 24.1 percent in 2024. That decline indicates improvement, but also leaves nearly one in five monitored routes above the threshold, highlighting the uneven experience behind aggregate measures. The figure concerns average retail payment costs within monitored corridors.

Measuring the payment from start to finish

For businesses, the report’s central question is whether performance measures reflect the outcome of a transaction, rather than improvements in individual components. The association recommends placing greater emphasis on the complete payment journey, including whether funds reach recipients at the expected time and cost.

“Businesses and consumers care what a payment costs and when it arrives, and that is what we need to measure,” said Emma Banymandhub, CEO of The Payments Association. “The international targets have helped bring the industry together, and we’ve seen real progress. The next step is to build on that work by looking at the whole payment journey and making safety and security part of how we measure success.”

The proposed approach would put greater weight on the service customers ultimately receive. Faster processing at one stage would not, on its own, establish that the overall payment experience had improved.

Gary Palmer, founder and CEO of Payall Payment Systems, argued that investment and innovation had not eliminated persistent problems. “What matters is not whether one component has improved, but whether the payment experience for all parties has improved,” he said.

The report also questions whether the existing framework gives sufficient attention to the risks associated with moving money faster. Safety and security are not currently measured as a standalone target alongside cost, speed, access and transparency, according to the association. Yet faster payments can leave less time to identify and stop fraud.

The report proposes measures covering payment fraud and misdirection, fund recovery, financial crime controls, and operational and cyber resilience. This would broaden the definition of a successful payment beyond speed and price. It would also bring the ability to prevent problems — and recover funds when something goes wrong — more explicitly into assessments of performance.

The Rethinking Cross-border Payments Targets report calls for building on the international targets with measures that better reflect customer outcomes and differences between payment routes.