Multilateral Platforms: Opportunities and Challenges in Enhancing Cross-Border Payments

Enhancing cross-border payments requires a comprehensive approach involving both the public and private sectors. 

While challenges exist at present, fostering strategic collaboration and alignment, and utilising modern technology can help ensure the scalability and future interoperability of multilateral payment platforms. The building blocks that are critical to position a multilateral platform for success would need to be constantly developed and refined. These include designing optimal governance and interoperability frameworks, addressing divergence in legal, regulatory, and oversight frameworks, and implementing a viable commercial model.

This report, produced by the Bank for International Settlements, in association with Elevandi and authored by Oliver Wyman and Baker McKenzie, is the result of a roundtable discussion among key stakeholders and leaders from both the public and private sectors, spanning international organisations, central banks, payment system operators, commercial banks, and FinTech companies at the Point Zero Forum in Zurich in June 2023.

The Point Zero Forum roundtable discussion and BIS Innovation Hub's Project Nexus serve as key starting points that could pave the way for developing a useful blueprint for other multilateral cross-border payment platforms to adopt going forward.

Download and read the full report here.

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