Cross-border payment transactions are surging around the world, supporting international trade and economic growth, as innovation makes payment systems and networks faster, safer, and more transparent. Global transaction volumes have grown to US$190 trillion this year, up 26.7% compared to US$150 trillion in 2022, data from Statista show.

In September, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) launched cooperation with payment card services giant Visa and London-based foreign exchange fintech firm Wise to enhance the speed and transparency of cross-border payments.

This came amid the growing fragmentation in the cross-border B2B payment space with multiple fintech firms offering various channels and systems. Swift is the premier network used by financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions.

Visa uses Swift’s payment pre-validation system to enable upfront checks of its B2B Connect payments. This reduces unnecessary delays by catching potential errors before the payment is initiated.

In the arrangement with Wise, financial institutions can route Swift payment messages directly to the Wise platform, which performs correspondent services for cross-border transactions. This includes pre-validation and access to connections Wise has made with fintechs to reduce processing steps for payments that originate and settle in different countries. The Wise Platform also updates the Swift GPI (global payment initiative) payment status tracker to ensure an end-to-end view across both networks.

Meanwhile, China has taken steps to bridge the gap between China-centric renminbi settlements and the broader global financial markets. As part of efforts to promote the renminbi as a global currency, the People’s Bank of China in 2015 launched the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which offers clearing and settlement services for cross-border RMB payments and trade. Reflecting China’s growing international trade, CIPS business volume saw an annual growth rate of 46% from 2020 to 2022. In the first three quarters of 2023, RMB cross-border receipts and payments reached 39 trillion yuan (US$5.46 trillion), around 80% of which were processed by CIPS.

Standard Chartered Hong Kong is the first foreign bank approved as a direct participant of CIPS outside mainland China in 2022. As of November 2023, CIPS has 1,482 participants with 129 as direct participants and 1,353 as indirect participants. Among the indirect participants, 1,005 are from Asia (including 563 from mainland China), 235 from Europe, 48 from Africa, 28 from North America, 20 from Oceania, and 17 from South America.

“Given CIPS’s continuously expanding global network, the diversification of participating institutions, and the increasingly varied cross-border business environment, the market has raised its expectations for the system’s functionalities and product services,” says CIPS chief executive officer Zaiyue Xu. “CIPS values the market’s needs and, based on extensive research, repeated validation, and preliminary pilot trials, has developed a series of new products and features. These are designed to overcome the various challenges and pain points that participating institutions face when conducting cross-border RMB business.”