The Financial Stability Board (FSB) has revealed that global financial regulators are expected to miss the G20’s 2027 deadline for improving the efficiency of international payments. The initiative, launched in 2021, aimed to make cross-border transactions faster, cheaper, and more transparent by cutting average retail payment costs to 1% or less and ensuring that most transactions are credited within an hour.
Despite early progress in setting up the infrastructure and frameworks envisioned in the G20’s ‘Roadmap,’ the latest FSB progress report indicates that these measures have yet to deliver measurable benefits for end-users. The report, released ahead of this month’s G20 meetings, found that key performance indicators showed only marginal global improvements since 2023.
Modest progress but limited impact
The FSB said that while transaction speeds have improved for wholesale and remittance payments, overall costs remain elevated, and transparency continues to fall behind. Regions such as sub-Saharan Africa still face some of the highest remittance fees worldwide, averaging 4%, compared with 3.2% last year and well above the G20’s sub-1% target.
Officials from the FSB attributed the slow progress to the scale of international coordination required and the complexity of upgrading payment infrastructure across jurisdictions. They acknowledged that the 2027 targets are unlikely to be met, leaving G20 policymakers to decide whether to extend the current timeline or establish a new one.
Representatives from the FSB noted that improving the ‘plumbing’ of national payment systems, by enabling round-the-clock operations and adopting standardised messaging protocols, remains an important step toward smoother cross-border transactions and better fraud detection.
FSB officials also commented that while digital assets such as stablecoins are being explored for payments, their contribution to resolving cross-border inefficiencies remains uncertain, particularly at the points where transactions originate and are received.
