U.S. Faster Payments Council Releases Cross-Border Faster Payments White Paper


For Immediate Release

June 16, 2021
– The U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC), a membership organization devoted to advancing safe, easy-to-use faster payments in the United States, today released its Cross-Border Faster Payments white paper. Developed by the FPC Cross-Border Payments Work Group, the paper is available for download in the FPC’s  Faster Payments Knowledge Center.

The Cross-Border Faster Payments paper addresses use case and experience requirements for cross-border faster payments, particularly along the dimensions of speed, cost, ubiquity, transparency, and risk.  It is structured to identify interoperability approaches, along with associated settlement schemes that are necessary to create a world-class cross-border payment system. 

“As businesses and consumers continue to expect digital solutions and faster payments options, the industry must act now to meet the demands of tomorrow. Particularly when it comes to addressing the barriers and complexities around cross-border payments,” said Kelvin Leung, Vice President of Product Management for New Payment Flows at Mastercard and FPC Cross-Border Payments Work Group Chair. “Our Work Group is pleased to present this valuable industry resource to help advance the adoption of faster cross-border payments that deliver greater convenience, security, and choice.”

As explored in the white paper, different use cases of cross-border payments have different consumer and business users, each with distinct needs and challenges: 
  • Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) must resolve two critical problems, namely speed and cost, regardless of the payment size being a high-value or low-value remittance. 
  • Consumer-to-Business (C2B) must also resolve problems related to speed and cost.
  • Business-to-Business (B2B) payments have challenges in speed, cost, and transparency. 
  • Business-to-Consumer (B2C) payments have challenges in speed, cost, and ubiquity, while transparency is quickly becoming a greater expectation within this user segment. 
The paper examines how the similarities and nuances of these needs require careful consideration when building systems that will deliver faster cross-border payments. To achieve these goals, faster cross-border payment systems must incorporate approaches to interoperability and settlement beyond what exists today.

“In addition to looking at various use cases, our paper outlines three different interoperability models and three settlement models because there is no one-size-fits-all solution,” said Craig DeWitt, Senior Director at Ripple and Vice Chair of the Cross-Border Work Group. “Moving money across-borders involves a complex network of banking partners and stops along the way, but faster cross-border payments are attainable as more and more countries adopt faster payments and focus efforts on interoperability among systems.”

The Cross-Border Faster Payments white paper is the FPC’s latest installment of industry guides and reports designed to educate and raise awareness on what’s needed to bring ubiquitous faster payments to the United States. Additional resources including The State of Play in U.S. Faster Payments, 2020 Faster Payments Barometer, Examining Faster Payments Fraud, and Faster Payments Interoperability are available in the Faster Payments Knowledge Center.

The FPC prioritizes industry collaboration in tackling complex topics such as interoperability among faster payments solutions, identifying real-world solutions that can ease adoption of faster payments, managing security risks and fraud threats, addressing barriers to financial inclusion and cross-border payments, and more, as the organization paves the way toward a future of faster payments for all.

For more information on the FPC, its current work efforts or to join, visit FasterPaymentsCouncil.org

Contact: 
Elizabeth Grice  
U.S. Faster Payments Council                             
720-737-7368     
egrice@fasterpaymentscouncil.org
                                                 
About the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC)
The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose vision is a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. By design, the FPC encourages a diverse range of perspectives and is open to all stakeholders in the U.S. payment system. Guided by principles of fairness, inclusiveness, flexibility and transparency, the FPC uses collaborative, problem-solving approaches to resolve the issues that are inhibiting broad faster payments adoption in this country. For more information, please visit FasterPaymentsCouncil.org.
 
Go Back