The 2023 Global Payments Forum explored opportunities to improve cross-border payments and meet evolving customer needs in a diverse, complex, and dynamic international payments landscape. The IIF, in partnership with The Payments Association and Emerging Payments Association Asia, held this virtual event on June 13 & 14 to advance a dialogue between senior payments executives, global standard-setters, and experts on the future of the global payments landscape. Takeaways from the discussion are summarized in this briefing note.

The private and public sector representatives each identified key impediments and opportunities to improve the future of cross-border payments. The industry has identified now as an inflection point in global payments, as existing providers and new entrants leverage technology solutions and upgraded data environments to serve a variety of customer types and payment methodologies. Simultaneously, governments are working to expand payments access and speed up payment processing through building and linking fast payment systems. The ever-expanding universe of data pertaining to payments allows for creating service offerings, but also creates new challenges around security and identity. Digital wallet and identity provision, as well as harmonization of data standards, are now essential areas of focus for payments providers. ISO20022 implementation is one effort to harmonize data structures with richer, usable data, that could then permit greater automation of payments. Such innovation could help to lower costs for payments, which many in the industry note is a challenge in an environment where multiple overlapping compliance obligations create a floor on how low costs can be lowered, at present. Technological impediments for cheaper, as well as more secure and efficient, have largely been removed at this point, leaving regulatory and governance challenges. 

Participants heard multiple plans to take solutions for these challenges forward and ways payments providers and officials plan to embrace the opportunities offered by innovation across the 2023 Global Payments Forum. This event was held against the backdrop of the newly-formed CPMI taskforces on legal, regulatory, and supervisory frameworks and interoperability and extension, and continued work on operationalizing the G20 Roadmap for enhancing cross-border payments. The insights presented during this forum will be raised by public and private sectors in these venues and this conversation will continue across multiple channels as we look toward the future of the payments ecosystem. 

This briefing note summarizes the discussion held on June 13 & 14, 2023, respecting that the forum is conducted under the Chatham House Rule and does not represent the official position of the IIF or its membership. To join the next Global Payments Forum, get involved with the IIF’s payments workstreams, or stay up to date with IIF’s digital finance content, please reach out to Emma Handel at [email protected].