Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

August 26, 2026

A Decade of U.S. Cross-Border Payments Efforts¹

Elena Falcettoni

One of the goals of the Federal Reserve has always been the promotion of a safe and efficient payments system, and it consistently fosters such an environment by playing multiple, simultaneous roles, including as a supervisor of banks and financial market utilities, as an operator of payments services within the industry, and as a catalyst for payment system improvements.²

To achieve the goal of a safe and efficient payments system, both domestic and international (cross-border) payments should be considered. While a greater international push has been observed since 2020 to improve the cross-border payments (CBP) space globally, the Federal Reserve had highlighted challenges and opportunities related to CBP from and to the United States in previous years and had pursued strategies to improve international payments across all segments (wholesale, retail, and remittances) in the country.³

In 2020, the G20 made enhancing CBP a priority through a Roadmap aimed at making CBP faster, cheaper, more accessible, and transparent. In 2021, the G20 endorsed quantitative global targets for addressing these four challenges across three market segments: wholesale, retail, and remittances.⁴ With the establishment of these targets, there was appetite for understanding the current status of global performance against the targets, to understand where progress has already been made, and where further improvement would be desirable. This effort led to the publication of the first report on current performance against the CBP targets in November 2023, which also reported regional breakdowns to aid the identification of areas where more focus may be warranted to make CBP cheaper, faster, more transparent, and more accessible.⁵ Reports on progress toward the target have been published annually since then.

This Feds Note discusses the findings of these reports with a focus on the region that includes the United States (which, depending on the segment, is either North America or the United States alone), while discussing the domestic decade-long efforts that the United States led to improve international payments that start or end domestically. The G20 progress reports can help us identify which challenges and segments might require additional focus, and the additional U.S. context highlights the past and ongoing developments that may push these improvements forward.

The U.S. cross-border payments context of the last decade

In September 2013, the Federal Reserve Banks released a Consultation Paper outlining the gaps and corresponding opportunities observed in the U.S. payments system as well as the desired outcomes to improve it. Among these, a clear mention was devoted to CBP, and the fact that such payments "from and to the United States are slow, inconvenient, costly, and lack transparency regarding fees and timing." The document recognized that CBP would only become more important and relevant with accelerated globalization of trade and labor.⁶

Following the public input received, the Federal Reserve published a document outlining the five strategies to be pursued together with industry stakeholders to improve the U.S. payments system.⁷ Out of these five, one of these strategies was to "achieve greater end-to-end efficiency for domestic and cross-border payments" with goals related to the implementation of a common financial messaging standard (ISO 20022), the adoption of secure business-to-business (B2B) payments, and the fostering of greater interoperability for person-to-person (P2P), person-to-business (P2B), and B2B directories.

The public comments received also outlined the impact of the Section 1073 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act ("Dodd-Frank Act") on the decision from some financial institutions, especially community banks and credit unions, to exit or consider exiting the cross-border remittance business, reducing access to such services. In particular, the Dodd-Frank Act amended EFTA by adding a new Section 919 that created a comprehensive set of consumer protection provisions, including mandates on the transparency of pricing, consumer rights for cancellation and refunds, error resolution rights, and the establishment of standards for the liability of remittance service providers for the acts of their agents.

Following the Dodd-Frank Act's requirement to issue new rules for remittance transfers, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (CFPB)'s new rules and amendments took effect during a period between October 2013 and November 2014, which are referred to collectively as the "Remittance Rule." The CFPB then published an assessment report in October 2018, having determined that the Remittance Rule was a significant rule,⁸ as required by Section 1022(d) of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Following these developments, the Federal Reserve considered expanding its suite of international payment service offerings. In particular, the follow-up publication on improving the U.S. payments system discussed how the Federal Reserve considered enabling Federal Reserve account-holding institutions participating in the Fedwire Funds Service to send CBP more easily and enhancing its FedGlobal ACH service offerings by increasing the country reach and offering improved features. Following cost and benefit analyses of these offerings, the former was not pursued, while industry developments that led to the decline (rather than the increase) of FedGlobal usage over time led to the discontinuation of certain FedGlobal services in 2016 and 2023.⁹

In the same document, the Federal Reserve reiterated its commitment to improving CBP by stating its intention to focus on proactive engagement with stakeholders to identify challenges and opportunities in the cross-border space, perceived gaps and potential areas for research and to foster collaboration with industry stakeholders to improve CBP.

While the G20 work focused on continued enhancement of CBP, the promotion of responsible innovation in the payments space opens the door for potential improvements of both domestic and international payments through improved technology.

International engagement on cross-border work post-2020

In 2020, the G20 made enhancing CBP a priority, with the goal of making CBP cheaper, faster, more transparent, and more accessible. To that end, the G20 set global quantitative targets for all four challenges (cost, speed, transparency, and access) across the three market segments (wholesale, retail, remittances), for a total of eleven targets¹⁰ to be reached by the end of 2027, with the exception of the remittance cost target, since the G20 endorsed the 2030 date set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG). All targets were set at a global level.

Following the establishment of these targets, the Targets Data Group (TDG) was then established with the purpose of understanding current progress against these targets. Measuring progress entailed two main goals: 1) Developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for each target to enable measurement of progress against the targets, and 2) Identifying data sources and providing initial estimates of progress toward each target. In November 2023, The TDG worked with the selected data providers (Swift, FXC, World Bank) to estimate the TDG-developed and FSB-endorsed KPIs or their approximations to report for the first time on current performance against the targets.

While the targets are global, the TDG worked with the data providers to provide geographical breakdowns of the global KPIs to promote a fuller understanding of where, and the degree to which, challenges remain. The availability of these regional breakdowns also allows us to understand how North America or the United States (depending on the degree of granularity publicly available) is fairing against the targets based on data available, and where more focus could yield improvement.

Wholesale

For the purposes of the progress reports, wholesale payments are defined as payments above $100,000.

No cost target was set for wholesale payments due to the price for payments often being linked to specific ad-hoc contracts and mixed with other types of services provided. Data limitations have so far hindered the measurement of the state of transparency in wholesale CBP.

Speed

North America consistently ranked as the fastest region for receiving wholesale CBP. In 2025, 73.1 percent of all CBP were received within an hour, and almost the entirety of them were received within one day, as it has been the case since 2023.¹¹

In the KPI reports, more discussion is devoted to the speed of wholesale payments, differentiating between the in-flight and the beneficiary leg. The in-flight time mirrors the time needed for the processing of the payment over the Swift network, from the originating to the beneficiary bank. The beneficiary leg instead reflects the time taken by the beneficiary bank to make the funds available to the end-customer. Interestingly, North America leads on both legs, and while all regions have been performing relatively similarly on the in-flight leg, the speed of the beneficiary leg has been significantly faster in North America than in all other regions since 2023.

Access

Access to wholesale CBP is proxied in the progress reports as the share of countries in which fewer than three financial institutions were active on the Swift network. This statistic has been relatively constant since 2023, at 7.6 percent.¹² The United States, with more than three financial institutions active on the Swift network, has consistently met the proxy for access.

In 2018, the Financial Stability Board published two reports on the decline in correspondent banking relationships. Using SWIFT data, changes in the number of correspondent bank relationships were analyzed, both overall and focusing on particular regions and countries.¹³ The FSB found that throughout the entire period of study (from 2011 to the end of 2017), North America experienced the overall lowest decline in the number of active correspondents (9.3 percent), while the region with the highest decline lost nearly three times as high of a share in the number of correspondent banking relationships. The report also specified that, while the data shows a decline in the number of active correspondents, there is no evidence of a corresponding decline in volume or value of payment messages.

Retail

Cost

The G20 cross-border payments program aims to reduce the global average cost of retail payments to 1 percent, with no corridors having costs higher than 3 percent. While the target was set across all use cases, the progress reports monitor progress separately for B2B, business-to-person (B2P), P2B, and P2P payments. It should be noted that the dataset that informs the KPIs in the progress report is a snapshot of the industry in a given year, with a high turnover of payment service providers from year to year. For an in-depth discussion of this turnover, please refer to the progress reports.¹⁴

Overall, North America reports higher costs than the global average for B2B, B2P, and P2P payments. P2B payments, instead, perform better than the global average and are the closest to the 1 percent target across all use cases for retail payments sent from North America.

While both B2B and B2P payments have been slowly increasing in cost according to the data in the progress reports, P2B and P2P payments have experienced a decrease in costs since 2024. North America showed improvement in P2P costs, showing a consistent slow decrease since 2023, while global P2P costs increased slightly.

North America also progressively reduced the percentage of corridors with costs exceeding 3 percent, from 36.1 percent in 2023 to 30.3 percent in 2025.¹⁵ These shares, however, mask quite a bit of heterogeneity across use cases. P2B payments sent from North America rank the cheapest according to this measure as well, with zero corridors experiencing average costs higher than 3 percent.

The voluntary survey on receiver-side costs similarly reveals high regional heterogeneity. Average payment fees in North America are generally lower than global averages, but average FX margins tend to be generally higher than global costs.

Speed

The G20 program targets 75 percent of cross-border retail payments to be credited within one hour of payment initiation, and the remainder within one day. Limitations of the data regarding the high turnover of payment service providers apply to the speed statistics as well. P2B payments are not included in speed and transparency statistics.

North American average speeds for B2B and B2P payments have shown a slow-down since 2023, and deteriorating speeds can be observed in the global averages.¹⁶ The large turnover in payment service providers may partially drive changes in the statistics, both at the global and regional level. North America reports the largest share of P2P payments settling within one hour, with over half of P2P payment services being settled at that speed, and three quarters of P2P payment services being settled within one day.¹⁷

Transparency

The G20 program aims for 100 percent of cross-border retail payments to be accompanied by full transparency on total transaction costs and processing times. In the progress reports, transparency is proxied by the data provider as the share of payment services providing information on both cost and speed.¹⁸

Based on the proxy for transparency, North America has made significant progress in retail payment transparency, narrowing the gap with global performance, especially for P2P payments. Transparency has been on an upward trend since 2023, with over two-thirds of P2P payment services reporting information on both cost and speed in 2025. B2B and B2P services, despite improvements, remain well below the performance of P2P payments, hovering around a quarter of services providing cost and speed information.

Access

The G20 program set a target of all end-users (individuals, businesses (including MSMEs), or banks) having access to at least one option for sending or receiving cross-border electronic payments. While the information on the progress reports comes from the World Bank and focuses primarily on developing economies, access to transaction accounts in the United States is generally high.

Focusing on individual access to accounts to proxy for this information, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation biennially collects information on unbanked and underbanked individuals.¹⁹ The 2023 survey results report that 95.8 percent of American households had an account at a financial institution, a share that has been consistently increasing over the years.

Isaacson and Bialowas (2026) estimated an institution's ability to send and receive cross-border payments through their participation in Fedwire. According to their analysis, a little over 20 percent of institutions, equal to about 1,000 Fedwire participants, did not take part in cross-border payment activity. While some of these institutions may offer cross-border payment services through a mechanism other than their direct participation in Fedwire, others may not offer these services at all.²⁰

Remittances

Remittances are closely monitored by the World Bank, who is also the data provider for the progress report. As remittances are mainly sent from advanced economies to emerging ones, the World Bank and its Remittance Prices Worldwide (RPW) database focus on the receiving country perspective for any regional analyses. The same approach was followed in the G20 KPI report.

From that perspective, the United States is outside of the scope of the analysis of remittances. However, remittances still play a crucial role within the payments system in the United States especially from a sending perspective, as more-marginalized communities are more likely to be involved with sending and receiving remittances, and the way that they access such services can speak to their degree of financial inclusion. Not only that, but remittances sent from the United States account for about one-sixth (16.6 percent) of worldwide remittances sent in 2023, at over $98 billion total amount of remittances sent.²¹ By contrast, the United States was the recipient of less than 1 percent of the total amount of worldwide remittances. The dominance of the United States as the largest remittance sender in the world has been true since 2017.²²

With the global relevance of the United States as a remittance sender, it is worth taking the time to analyze the data available from the sending perspective whenever possible. Updated statistics on transparency for remittances, which focus on laws and regulations, were not yet available for later years, and the discussion is therefore omitted here as well.

Cost

Following the RPW standards, there are two types of cost averages reported: The regular average cost of sending a remittance from the United States and the "SmaRT" indicator average. SmaRT indicators are calculated as the simple average of the three cheapest qualifying services for sending the equivalent of $200 (KPI 3 in the report) or $500 (KPI 4 in the report) in each corridor. One could think of SmaRT averages as being the average cost experienced by an informed consumer.

Table 1 reports the target values, the KPI values for the global performance as discussed in the report, and the corresponding KPI values for the United States in 2023 and 2025.²³

Table 1: Simple and SmaRT average cost for $200 and $500, Global vs. United States, 2023 vs. 2025

As the table shows, while the United States performs better than the global simple average cost, that cost is still well above the target. However, when considering SmaRT averages, the average cost of sending a remittance from the United States has decreased to 2.8 percent for $200 and to 1.9 percent for $500, both below the 3 percent threshold. This comparison reveals that an informed consumer already has access to remittance services below the target cost.

Additionally, the United States fares decently also in terms of the percentage of corridors with a SmaRT average cost of sending a remittance above 5 percent. While that share doubled for $200 remittances in Q1 2025 to 20.5 percent (an unusual increase relative to the stable values around 10 percent of prior years), that same share for $500 remittances equaled 12.8 percent in Q1 2025. Both values are in line with the global performance (equal to 19.3 percent for $200 and 12.5 percent for $500).

Nonetheless, with a not insignificant share of corridors experiencing costs over 5 percent vs. a target of none, it is important to recognize the heterogeneity in costs depending on the receiving end. The concentration of high costs for services within specific receiving countries (e.g., Afghanistan and Cuba) or corridors within specific regions (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa) highlight the importance of both ends of a corridor in determining the cost and speed of international transfers within that corridor itself.^24,25

The United States generally has costs for sending remittances slightly better than the global average, and it performs comparably to the global average in terms of the percentage of corridors experiencing a cost higher than 5 percent. When looking at SmaRT averages, which assume an informed consumer, the U.S. is performing well not only relative to the global average but also relative to the cost target.

Speed

The G20 Roadmap targets 75 percent of cross-border remittances to be available within one hour of payment initiation, and the remainder within one day.

Table 2 reports the target values, the KPI values for the global performance as discussed in the report, and the corresponding KPI values for the United States in 2023 and 2025.²⁶

Table 2: Share of remittances received within an hour/day, Global vs. United States, 2023 vs. 2025

The United States somewhat outperforms global averages in remittance speed. In 2025, 61.4 percent of remittances from the United States were available within 1 hour (slightly up from 59.8 percent in 2023), compared to the global average of 54.4 percent. For availability within 1 day, 79.5 percent of remittances sent from the United States were received within that time period, higher than the global 76.3 percent. While the US is closer to the targets, both the US and global figures remain below the 75 percent (within 1 hour) and 100 percent (within 1 day) targets.

Access

The G20 program aims for 90 percent of individuals (including those without bank accounts) to have access to a means of sending and receiving cross-border remittances.

Section 1073(b) of the Dodd-Frank Act required the Federal Reserve Board to provide biennial reports to Congress on the Board's work with the Federal Reserve Banks and Treasury to expand payment mechanisms for remittance transfers to foreign countries until 2020.

In that report series,²⁷ some discussion was devoted to the availability of different institutions to send remittances from the United States. This discussion is based on depository institutions that complete the Consolidated Report on Condition and Income (Call Report). The Call Report provides financial data on condition and results of operations of most institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Of the 5,456 institutions that filed the Call Report as of December 31, 2018, the report finds that 3,323 depository institutions, or 60.9 percent of the total, offered remittance services to consumers.²⁸

In addition, insured credit unions report the number of international remittances originated year-to-date but do not collect information on the type of service used and were not included in this count.

Looking at the progress report and focusing on the same concept that access to a transaction account is synonymous with access to remittances services, then 95.8 percent of American households are currently banked and have therefore access to a transaction account, as discussed above. Actual access might then be impacted by a financial institution's engagement in cross-border payment activity, as Isaacson and Bialowas (2026) discuss.

Latest developments and the road ahead

Promoting a safe and efficient payment system has always been one of the goals of the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve plays different roles within the payments system, including as a regulator of financial institutions and market utilities, as an operator itself of key parts of payments infrastructure, and as a catalyst for improvements. As such, any challenges that may affect the payments industry and any opportunities that could improve it are of high interest.

The work on cross-border payments through the G20 Roadmap allowed for the opportunity to measure the current state of cross-border payments across regions globally and their progress over the years. With the 2025 progress report now published, and with three years of data collected through this important workstream, certain themes seem to have emerged. First, it is now apparent that certain regions and jurisdictions, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, are lagging behind. The heterogeneity in performance that has been present in the data since the first progress report has not decreased, hinting at local challenges that need to be better identified. The more-recent focus on local action and engagement, relying more strongly on boots-on-the-ground events, may be essential for further progress to happen. The increased regional focus may be beneficial looking ahead, to guarantee that resources are devoted where they are most needed.

Second, the data available on cross-border payments is limited, despite the public-private partnership that has allowed these measurements to happen in the first place. By nature, cross-border payments involve multiple jurisdictions, with multiple regulatory and legal frameworks, and the data behind all of these transactions crosses borders itself and is not easily available in a centralized manner. This limitation clearly emerges when one looks at data gaps that cannot easily be closed or accurately measured. However, even for those indicators and statistics where data are available, there are important limitations to the datasets themselves: a panel perspective is not easily obtained, measures are often missing certain parts of the payment chain, and the heterogeneity in both providers and services in a given market hinder the ability to obtain a full picture.

Third, it is vital to further promote an increased engagement with a broad range of stakeholders to understand the challenges that are hindering further progress. Given the challenges experienced by certain regions and jurisdictions, it is important to maintain a two-way conversation with the private industry who is first in line to face these challenges and to innovate away from them.

While the data revealed an increased focus on particular regions and jurisdictions, important actions within the United States have also contributed to improvements to payments both domestic and cross-border.

First, the implementation of a common financial messaging standard (ISO 20022), which was one of the goals of the 2013 paper, has come to fruition, with the Fedwire Funds Service having migrated to the standardized messaging system in July 2025. Across different corridors, ISO 20022 is becoming the standard, and anecdotal evidence suggests that wholesale transactions are executed faster once both ends of the payment chain have implemented ISO 20022.

Second, the Federal Reserve introduced the FedNow Service in July 2023, operating 24/7/365. Since its launch, the FedNow Service has been limited, by Regulation J, to domestic payments only. As instant payments adoption has grown over the last few years, industry demand for FedNow to facilitate international payments has grown. Therefore, in April 2026 the Board proposed changes to Regulation J that would remove the restriction that prevents cross-border payment flows and give banks the flexibility to use the FedNow Service to facilitate cross-border transactions.²⁹ The comment period closed on June 9, 2026, and the feedback received is currently being evaluated.

Third, in October 2025, the Federal Reserve approved the expansion of operating hours of the Fedwire Funds Service and the National Settlement Service (NSS) to a 22x7x365 system, therefore limiting the period of time when the services are unavailable. Such an expansion in operating hours is likely to lead to faster payments, reducing any delays in the origination or receipt of a payment due to calendar days or working hours.

Finally, innovation is happening domestically that will have important implications cross-border. In July 2025, the GENIUS Act³⁰ was signed into law, with the Federal Reserve as one of the regulators under the Act. While the rule implementing this Act is due in 2026, such a regulatory framework will likely mean that U.S. stablecoins will be backed with safe and liquid assets, allowing stablecoins to become a viable and safe alternative in the payments industry. Stablecoins have the potential to offer an alternative for traditional cross-border payments. For example, the "stablecoin sandwich" model of cross-border payments could lead to transfers that are expected to be faster and lower-cost. This model involves the conversion of the national currency in one country into a U.S. dollar denominated reserve asset backed stablecoin, after which that stablecoin is transferred to another individual and ultimately exchanged into the national currency at its destination. Given these potential efficiency gains, remittances are a frequently cited use case for stablecoins.

Other technologies and innovations will continue to interact with the payments system, some of them potentially bringing higher efficiency and competition within the industry. Among these, tokenization is another example where technological innovation may lead to broader impacts for the payments system, including for cross-border payments.

The promotion of safe and responsible innovation in payments can open the door for potential improvements both domestically and internationally, while at the same time making sure that any emerging risks are carefully evaluated and addressed. More research is needed as these technologies emerge, as new use cases are identified, and as new risks become a reality, and further engagement with the industry is vital to understand how these technologies are used, and what challenges and opportunities may lie ahead.