Globalization patterns worldwide may change their forms, but the essential nature of cross-border commerce keeps international transaction settlement at the top of the fintech agenda. Here is a brief analysis of the state of cross-border settlements today and a forecast for this segment for the near future.
The total cross-border payments market reached almost $200 trillion in 2024 and is estimated to surpass $320 trillion by 2032. Though in terms of volume, they remain significantly smaller than domestic transactions, payments that bridge distances between countries are a cornerstone of international trade, investment, and remittances.
Cross-Border Payments Are Key to Globalization
Due to innovations in communication and payment technology, the world is becoming more globalized. Business teams can be scattered across the globe, but employee payouts are still managed collectively through unified platforms and fintech solutions. Manufacturers order details for their products from different world corners and settle their international suppliers’ invoices with ease. Don’t even get me started on cross-border e-commerce…
Nearly six out of ten shoppers worldwide buy products and services from outside their countries, and 35% of global consumers purchase goods cross-border at least once a month. Shoppers in some countries (e.g., South Africa, Nigeria, Sweden, UAE) are even more active seekers of international deals, as over 70% of consumers there engage in cross-border e-commerce.
However, ordering clothing or electronics from other countries constitutes just a small fraction of cross-border transactions. Wholesale and B2B cross‑border segments dominate the field. In 2024 alone, large wholesale transactions between institutions, banks, and governments constituted $154 trillion, and B2B exchange was worth around $31 trillion.
Will Globalization Remain a Thing in 2026?
Today, lots of international trade patterns are being ruined or hindered. Geopolitical and economic tensions rise, reshaping long-standing trade partnerships and forming new alliances. To distant observers, it may seem that globalization is doomed as a concept, but it’s not quite true.
What we observe today is not a decline but rather a transformation of global cooperation. While global power centres intensify their rivalry, the entwinement of worldwide economies is evolving into a more fragmented, regionalized architecture. We can see smaller trade blocs, but cross‑border flows of goods and capital persist. Critical supply chains are kept very well alive and resilient.
In many cases, cross-border commerce is simply rerouted through new corridors or intermediary “connector” countries. In other situations, international partners resort to bilateral or three-party trade, instead of relying on multilateral agreements. Anyway, future trade frameworks will surely preserve numerous channels for cross-border commerce, whatever course the global politics take.
Main Challenges Cross-Border Settlement Faces
Although cross-border transactions constitute a huge bulk of global payments, they are typically more problematic than domestic money exchange. They are slower, more expensive, and less transparent, and involve complex infrastructure.
Low Speed Hinders Cross-Border Liquidity
As of 2025, it still takes more than one day for one-third of retail cross-border payments to settle. For different payment methods, settlement times vary significantly:
- Traditional bank transfers typically settle in 2 to 5 business days.
- Expedited transfers settle within 24-48 hours.
- Real-time and near-instant payment systems and platforms may settle cross-border payments in minutes or even seconds, but these technologies are still emerging and not yet universally available.
Lack of Interoperability Complicates International Transactions
As global countries tighten their bilateral and few-party cooperation, they still face many discomforts of fragmented payment systems. It’s hard to maintain stable and liquid cash flows when most of your international partners use slow payment rails. And that’s just the beginning of the trouble.
Lack of interoperability creates friction at nearly every stage of the cross-border transaction lifecycle. Disparate messaging standards, inconsistent compliance frameworks, and siloed payment infrastructures force financial institutions to rely on intermediaries, adding cost, latency, and operational risks.
Even as domestic instant payment systems flourish, the absence of real-time coordination across jurisdictions limits scalability and transparency. That is especially painful for large-volume B2B and treasury flows. For fintechs, this fragmentation demands complex integrations and workarounds that ultimately undermine the seamless experience global commerce now expects.
The Less Interoperable The More Costly: Cross-Border Transaction Price
In a recent survey by Visa and Thunes, the majority of 233 European fintech and payment-provider executives emphasized that interoperability remains a major obstacle when integrating across multiple markets and systems, despite their overall confidence in own companies’ cross-border capabilities. Nearly 40% of firms surveyed have lost a business deal due to cross-border payments challenges such as security issues, payment tracking, or processing speed.
Along with inconvenience, poor interoperability of separate national payment systems brings merchants and payment service providers higher operational costs. A simple analysis of two possible cross-border payment scenarios shows that lack of interoperability more than doubles the average cost of cross-border transactions.
Thus, interoperable systems like EU’s SEPA, Singapore & Thailand link between PayNow and PromptPay, or India’s UPI conection with PayNow charge on average 2% of transaction value. Meanwhile, typical SWIFT-based payments involving multiple correspondent banks, manual reconciliation, and FX markup may incur between 4% and 8% for B2C or remittances, and up to 3%–6% for B2B transactions.
Obscurity Disrupts Global Payment Ecosystems
Both payers and recipients of cross-border transactions often have little visibility into fees, exchange rates, and arrival times. Not all the intermediaries involved clearly disclose all the charges upfront. This leads to businesses losing trust in the cooperation process and significantly undermines cash flow forecasting.
Today, transparency is ranked among the top three pain points by financial institutions managing cross-border payments. Without end-to-end visibility, financial institutions struggle to track funds, screen counterparties efficiently, and ensure regulatory compliance, risking to lose reputation and face hefty fines. Besides, lack of transparency increases the risk of transaction delays or unexplained rejections.
A lack of real-time status updates also often requires manual follow-up for delays or payment rejections. It adds time, cost, and frustration for both clients and support teams. For SMEs, this friction can be a real barrier to participating in global trade. Meanwhile, the majority (60%) of global treasurers report thata lack of payment visibility prevents them from managing working capital effectively.
How Are Cross-Border Payment Players Addressing These Issues Today
Over the last few years, a lot of progress has been made in overcoming the predicaments of cross-border trade and other types of international financial transactions. Today, cross-border payments are getting much faster, affordable, and user-friendly. That’s where cross-border settlement stands in 2025.
Real-Time Is a Goal, Not a Universal Reality
Real-time or near-instant payment systems are gaining great popularity in multiple regions. India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix are just a few examples. After a slow start, even the US has accelerated its instant payment efforts as FedNow hit a “tipping point” in Q3 2024, with triple-digit growth rates in both payment volumes and values, as well as active use registered among major local banks and corporate clients.
Many Real-Time Systems Get Interconnected, But Others Lag Behind
Some of the regional instant payment rails are closely entwined with one another, like Singapore’s PayNow is interconnected with Thailand’s PromptPay, India’s UPI, and Malaysia’s DuitNow. The EU is also uniting all member countries in a single financial system via the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer scheme and the TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) system. Meanwhile, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have an AFAQ system that enables instant transfers across the region via more than 50 participant commercial banks.
However, many more countries are still quite far from immediacy in transaction settlement. In particular, emerging or geopolitically complex economies (e.g. Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina) might have domestic instant payment systems, but they are often either nascent or under development. In such cases, cross-border instant payments remain rare or unavailable due to regulatory, infrastructure, economic, or international relations challenges.
Efforts to Establish Cross-Border Linkages Accelerate
Therefore, as of today, real-time cross-border payments are undoubtfully a goal but still a distant one for many economies. Nevertheless, as instant transactions become more of a universal standard, global markets rush to establish their own ways to connect to partner economies in the blink of an eye.
One such example is China’s recent Payment Connect initiative that links Mainland China’s Internet Banking Payment System (IBPS) with Hong Kong’s Faster Payment System (FPS). The leading Asian country, which boasts one of the world’s most mature and widely used real-time payment systems domestically, is accelerating efforts to boost its cross-border payments ecosystem with fast, secure, efficient, and convenient solutions. Similar initiatives are seen across the globe as the race for market liquidity intensifies.
Interoperability Imperative Becomes Pressing
At this point, fragmented legacy systems, disparate standards, and siloed compliance frameworks continue to drive up costs and slow down the settlement of cross-border transactions. Thus, payment industry experts and leading institutions argue that only through fully integrated real-time ecosystems, where payments, identity verification, FX, and AML/KYC tools operate seamlessly, can end‑to‑end transparency and efficiency be achieved.
Although it may sound challenging, the efforts to reach true interoperability between separate payment systems prove to be rewarding.
“While most real‑time payments systems are built for local transactions, examples where the market has proven that we can interlink real‑time payments systems — such as between Singapore and India — prove that local systems need to be harmonised in order to enable seamless cross‑border real‑time payments.”
Katja Lehr, Managing Director, EMEA Payments Solutions, J.P. Morgan Payments
Use Case of Singapore – India Illustrates Clear Interoperability Benefits
The given example of Singapore-India interoperability shows how scalable cloud infrastructure may facilitate transactions in a major remittance corridor. The linkage helps keep costs competitive compared to legacy money transfer operators, aligning with global Sustainable Development Goal targets to reduce remittance costs below 3%. It also allows both sides to handle increasing transaction volumes without degradation in speed or reliability. Besides, the system offers a simple, seamless user experience analogous to domestic payments, promoting adoption among individuals and local businesses.
Without such interoperability, cross-border transactions remain non-competitive, inefficient, and costly. They simply do not satisfy the needs of modern consumers and businesses who “now demand fast, low‑cost cross‑border transactions with complete price transparency, guaranteed delivery amounts and real‑time traceability,” reminds Steve Naudé, Managing Director at popular international transfer platform Wise.
Current Initiatives to Boost Interoperability
Therefore, today, many major institutions are working on interoperable payment systems. Currently, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is working to create an ASEAN regional interoperable real-time payment infrastructure within Project Nexus that can be further potentially linked with the European Central Bank’s TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) system.
Meanwhile, European leaders are developing Wero – a next-generation digital wallet that combines instant transfers, QR payments, “Request to Pay” functionality, loyalty programs, and other services in a single payment solution. This single digital wallet goes along with a unified payment scheme functioning seamlessly across all EU member states.
Latin American and African nations are also building foundational infrastructure, aiming for interoperable real-time payments to support a universal digital economy.
Digital Currencies and Stablecoins Are One Way to Boost Transparency in Cross-Border Settlements
Digital assets of all kinds, including central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), alternative cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, are increasingly perceived as a simple yet efficient way to boost transparency in monetary exchanges across jurisdictions.
Unlike traditional correspondent banking systems, which often involve opaque routing and layered fees, digital assets enable near-instant settlement with an immutable on-chain record of each transaction. This ledger-based architecture allows all parties,from senders and recipients to regulators, to see the transaction status, cost, and route of funds in real time, dramatically improving trust and reducing disputes.
Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Payment Projects 2025
In 2025, several initiatives are demonstrating the potential of blockchain-based cross-border transactions. The mBridge project, led by the BIS Innovation Hub and involving central banks from China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE, successfully piloted real-time cross-border CBDC settlements with transparent ledger-based tracking.
Meanwhile, Ripple’s collaboration with the National Bank of Georgia and the launch of Circle’s USDC on new chains like Solana and Base are helping businesses in emerging markets send and receive digital dollars with end-to-end visibility. Circle’s USDC and EURC tokens have also received a timely license to debut in the European Union, which gives them opportunities to facilitate regional cross-border trade.
SWIFT global banking messaging network is both actively developing a platform to connect multiple central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to the existing financial system and exploring and integrating stablecoins to enhance cross-border payment efficiency.
Even private-sector stablecoins, such as PayPal USD and JP Morgan’s JPM Coin, are being used in controlled environments to streamline international B2B payments, where speed and compliance transparency are critical. These examples point to a clear trend: digital assets are not just about decentralization or innovation, they’re becoming essential infrastructure for trusted global finance.
What’s Next For Cross-Border Payment Settlements: 2026 Forecast
Judging from the current industry developments and the direction payment execs are choosing for their businesses, here’s what we envision for the future of cross-border transactions.
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The Rise of Expanded Regional Payment Networks
In current circumstances, the world is too divided to create an efficient global payment ecosystem, especially one with a single controlling entity or platform. As economic and political partnerships are tested for resilience, financial ties will become more and more decentralized. We predict the expansion of existing real-time payment systems (RTPS) linkages (EU, GCC, ASEAN countries, etc) as well as the rise of new regional networks.
Thus, the recent BRICS Summit in July 2025 reaffirmed the members’ commitment to developing and implementing multilateral payment solutions, with the focus on real-time data and interoperability. Some of these ambitions may materialize next year. Besides, a mesh of interoperable RTPSs in African countries may gradually start forming a continent-wide network in the nearest future, given the continuous inflow of extra financing for vulnerable nations.
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Embedded FX and Compliance Features Automate
Next to invisible checkouts for international commerce, currency exchange, and compliance capabilities will grow more automated and become invisible to the user. Embedded into payment platforms via APIs, FX conversion will happen in the background, with AI agents selecting the most competitive exchange rates at the point of payment, though pricing shall remain transparent.
Meanwhile, AI and regtech tools will scan transactions for AML and sanctions risks in milliseconds within “compliance‑by‑default” architectures, adapting to legal requirements of various jurisdictions in real-time. Therefore, 2026 will see many more platforms layering instant AML checks, dynamic FX routing, and real‑time regulatory reporting into every transaction, thus pushing true “invisible finance” from niche use cases into the mainstream.
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Real-Time Moves From Luxury to Mass Use Segment
Instant or near-instant payments will be getting more accessible due to the rapid development of both domestic and international RTPSs. As those payment networks grow more interoperable, millions of businesses and individuals will gain advantage from low-cost, high-liquidity cross-border transactions.
Today, only about 30% of all cross‑border transactions settle in real time. As the availability of interoperable infrastructure and API‑based integrations will grow, real‑time settlement’s share of total cross‑border volume is expected to rise up to 50% within the next few years.
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Use Cases Across Crypto and Tokenized Assets Will Grow
Cross-border transactions are one of the main perceived use cases for CBDCs, stablecoins, and certain tokenized assets. Blockchain-based payments replace opaque, multi‑step correspondent banking chains with single‑ledger, programmable money, delivering instant settlement and an immutable audit trail. Built on common messaging standards and interoperable platforms, digital asset exchanges could dramatically cut costs and boost traceability in international transactions.
Hence, we predict the accelerated development of tokenized platforms combining central bank reserves, commercial bank money, and government bonds on a unified ledger next year. Meanwhile, stablecoin issuance and on‑chain FX pools are projected to double, with more regulatory clarity on hand, and cross‑border settlements settled via CBDCs will continue growing at curent pace – over 30% year‑on‑year.
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Fraud and Risk Landscape Complicates
To not leave you blindsided with all these rosy expectations, we shall also mention the problems that will persist in 2026 and beyond. First and foremost, the issues of payment security intensify along with the race for real-time liquidity. Experts warn that real‑time rails compress the window left for anomaly detection, giving fraudsters more opportunities for their sophisticated tactics to succeed.
Therefore, institutions must invest heavily in AI‑driven analytics, behavioural biometrics, “cooling‑off” mechanisms for large transfers, and numerous other proactive fraud prevention tools. For 2026, balancing frictionless user experience with robust security remains a critical challenge and will be one of the main pain points to address for the fintech community.
On a Final Note
Despite the challenges ahead, the momentum behind innovation in cross‑border settlements offers genuine cause for optimism. As regional networks deepen, digital assets mature, and collaboration between public and private sectors intensifies, the vision of instant, transparent, and secure international payments draws ever closer. By 2026, what once felt like ambitious experimentation will increasingly become the dependable backbone of global trade, unlocking new opportunities for businesses and communities everywhere.
