Cross-Border Low Value Payments and Regional Integration: Enablers and Disablers

This paper discusses the enablers and disablers of cross-border low value payments and regional integration. The current landscape for cross-border payments is dominated by correspondent banking relationships. Relying on one or more correspondent banks to send payments abroad is slow and expensive, and both sending and receiving banks often have little to no visibility of payments as they are being processed, and they often do not know what fees will be deducted until a payment arrives. As the speed of payments increases in domestic environments, banks, corporates, and consumers have come to expect faster and more efficient payments across borders as well, and the current reality of correspondent banking is increasingly falling short of customer needs and expectations.