Building Cross-Border Payments for an Interconnected World

Cross-border payments are an essential component of international trade and commerce. However, the existing infrastructure and regulations pose significant challenges in achieving seamless connectivity across borders. The future of cross-border payments lies in embracing emerging technologies, reducing friction points, and fostering collaboration among regulators, policymakers, and crucial decision-makers. The Elevandi Insights Forum roundtable brought together CEOs and strategic leaders from the government and private sector across the world, with the discussion co-moderated by Jo Yeo, Head of Payments Development and Data Connectivity at MAS, and Raihan Zulimran, Team Lead of Next Gen Payments at MAS respectively, as well as global experts from KPMG. The discussion brought up several key topics, best summarised as follows:
  1. Interoperability and incorporating existing infrastructure, regulations, laws, and monetary frameworks are critical to achieving interconnectivity.
  2. Bilateral connectivity to multilateral connectivity is essential for enhanced payment connectivity. Uniform soft infrastructure, strategic projects, and well-defined building blocks are necessary to achieve multilateral cross-border payments arrangements.
  3. Emerging technologies in cross-border payments, DLT, and digital currencies require appropriate governance frameworks that cover DLT-based systems and enable a multi-CBDC approach.
  4. Regulatory policies and cyber resilience pose significant challenges to simplifying cross-border payments flow and securing CBDCs.

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