The Financial Stability Board (FSB) today published priority themes for the next phase of the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments, delivering a handful of updates and timeline revisions to its 2021 Progress Report.
Specifically, the report notes a change to building block 14 (of 19 original blocks) from the 2021 Progress Report, extending the timeline for ISO 20022 harmonisation from December 2022 until December 2023.
Speaking on the Sibos panel, ‘The world is watching: Hitting G20 targets for cross-border payments,’ Victoria Cleland, executive director, Payments, Bank of England, was asked about the change to building block 14, and what the benefits of this change will mean for the industry.
“I think the change to the FSB milestone was really to give the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) more time to really get that guidance right. We’re seeing a lot of movement from the industry at the moment, but they wanted a bit more time to make sure the guidance was right to get agreement,” explained Cleland.
“ISO is incredibly important and the real benefits we will get from ISO 20022 are the networking effects (the more people using it the greater insights into what other people are doing), and interoperability (enabling different systems to talk to each other which helps cross border payments and business continuity).”
Cleland elaborated that the report gives a “real richness” in the progress that has been made against the actions within the 2021 Roadmap.
“For example, reports on how central bank issued digital currencies might be used to benefit cross-border payments, information about payment versus payment guidance, around operating times guidance. I think the CPMI alone completed around 20 actions so far, and we can measure these across the Roadmap.”
These actions alone aren’t going to deliver in and of themselves, Cleland explained, they’re more around guidance, challenges and about pushing forward with prioritisation of how to get this finalised.
Cleland cited ISO 20022 as a key area where we can see tangible progress in cross-border goals as banks have begun to move toward the new standard.