Future of Cross-Border Payments: Why the G20's 2027 Targets Are Slipping

In 2020 the G20 did something unusual for a club of finance ministers: it put numbers on a promise. By the end of 2027, cross-border payments were meant to be cheaper, faster, more widely available and more transparent, with specific percentages attached. With a little over a year to go, the people tracking those numbers have said plainly that the world will miss most of them.

What the targets actually say

The targets differ by segment, as summarised in a February 2026 Reserve Bank of Australia bulletin:

• Cost. Retail payments should average below 1%, with no corridor above 3%. Remittances should average below 3%, with no corridor above 5%, by 2030.
• Speed. For retail, remittances and wholesale alike, 75% of payments should reach the recipient within one hour and the rest within one business day.
• Access. Every user should have at least one electronic option for sending and receiving, and more than 90% of individuals should have a means of receiving remittances electronically.
• Transparency. Every provider should show the total cost, expected delivery time, tracking and terms before a payment is made.

Most of these fall due at the end of 2027. The remittance cost goal runs to 2030, matching the UN development target.

Where the world stands

The Financial Stability Board's 2025 progress report found only slight improvement since indicators were first measured in 2023. The board said it is unlikely that satisfactory global improvement will arrive in line with the 2027 timetable.

The detail is sobering. Only 35.4% of retail cross-border payments were credited within an hour in 2025, up 1.9 percentage points. For remittances the figure was 54.4%. Both are well short of 75%. Wholesale bank-to-bank payments did better, with more than half arriving within an hour. On cost, person-to-person retail payments averaged about 2.5%, stable since 2023, against a 1% goal. Sending $200 as a remittance cost about 6.4% on average, more than double the 3% target.

The World Bank's own price survey tells the same story from the ground. In the first quarter of 2025, the global average cost of sending $200 was 6.49%, and the World Bank's Q3 2025 reading was still 6.36%. Banks averaged 14.55%, while digital services averaged 4.85%. Sub-Saharan Africa remained the most expensive region to send to at 8.78%, and South Asia the cheapest at 4.80%.

Averages hide wide regional gaps. On FXC Intelligence's reading of the FSB data, Sub-Saharan Africa is the most expensive region to send from, at just over 4% for a $1,000 person-to-person payment, while Europe and Central Asia is the cheapest at 1.93%. About 18% of corridors still average above 3%. Speed varies by how money goes in: cash-funded transfers often arrive fast, while about 42% of transfers funded from bank accounts take longer than a full business day. A warehouse supervisor in Riyadh who sends money home from a bank app may be waiting longer than her colleague who pays cash at a counter.

There is good news in access. FXC Intelligence's reading of the FSB data shows 78.7% of adults now have a transaction account, up nearly five points since 2022, and transparency is improving, with about 63% of services showing both cost and speed up front.

Why the gap is so stubborn

The FSB's own diagnosis is that most of the policy work is done, but it has not reached the end user. Domestic payment systems are the first and last mile of every cross-border payment, and if a receiving bank in Lagos or Dhaka only credits accounts in batches, a fast international leg does not help. Long correspondent chains add cost and compliance checks at every hop, which we cover in correspondent banking explained. And many corridors are small, so providers have little reason to compete on price.

The international leg of a payment is rarely the slow part anymore. The delays live at the edges, inside domestic systems and compliance queues.

The rails that could close the gap

ISO 20022 messaging

On 22 November 2025, Swift ended the coexistence period for cross-border payment messages, making ISO 20022 mandatory. Swift said about 97% of instructions were already in the new format just before the deadline. Richer structured data should mean fewer payments stopped for manual checks, which is where a lot of delay comes from. Our piece on Swift and ISO 20022 in 2026 goes deeper.

Linking instant payment systems

The most direct fix for speed is connecting domestic instant systems to each other. Nexus, first designed at the BIS, is the most ambitious attempt. Its operating company appointed a joint venture of Malaysia's PayNet and Singapore's NETS as technical operator in February 2026, with India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand as founding partners and go-live targeted for 2027, according to a Nexus Global Payments announcement. The design aims for transfers in under a minute. See Project Nexus explained.

Stablecoins

Stablecoins settle in minutes at any hour, which speaks directly to the speed target. Business payments in stablecoins reached an estimated $226 billion a year by late 2025, according to McKinsey. But they do not by themselves solve the last mile: the recipient still needs a way into local currency, and the FSB has been cautious about their risks. They are likely to help most in corridors where banks are slow and costly, rather than replace bank rails generally. Bill payments and supplier invoices in high-cost corridors are where that is already happening.

What happens after 2027

Missing a target is not the same as failing. The roadmap gave the industry common measurements, and the FSB is now pushing for more regional and national action rather than more global plans. Expect the next phase to focus on the hardest corridors, especially those into Sub-Saharan Africa, on getting more domestic systems to run instant payments, and on linking them. For a parent in Leeds paying school fees in Kochi, or a shop in Nairobi paying a supplier in Mumbai, the change will show up as fewer days of waiting and a clear price before pressing send. Those are the two things the targets were always really about.

The bigger question is whether the official sector or the market moves faster. Central banks are building links like Nexus on multi-year timelines, while private payment companies are wiring stablecoin corridors in months. The likely outcome is a mix: regulated bank rails for large and routine flows, and newer rails filling gaps where those rails are slowest. Corridors such as the ones covered in our UAE to India money transfer guide will be an early test of which approach users prefer.

Figures are from the FSB's 2025 consolidated progress report and the World Bank's Remittance Prices Worldwide survey, the latest available as of October 2026.

About this researchMuffinPay InsightsIndependent analysis of stablecoins, CBDCs, cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure. Every figure is linked to its source. Read our editorial standards →