• Bob Stark, Global Head of Market Strategy at Kyriba


• 15.10.2025 02:45 pm
#CrossBorderPayments #PaymentInnovation

The office of the CFO is entering a new era of cross-border payments, driven by the migration of global payment standards to ISO 20022. The forced move away from FIN formatted Swift payments has generated much confusion and stress for IT teams seeking to align with their banks’ updated payment format requirements and testing complexities. Yet hidden within this migration is an opportunity for global finance teams to modernise global payment strategies, specifically reducing costs, increasing payment security and enabling greater payment automation. 

The challenges of cross-border payments are well understood by any CFO and CIO whose teams are initiating global payments and implementing the technology that supports the generation, approval, formatting and ultimate transmission of payments to banking partners. International payments are expensive due to the FX spreads charged to convert and deliver to a new currency. And these payments are often slow, especially in the cases of intermediary banks facilitating delivery to beneficiaries.  

Swift FINplus

One specific enhancement is Swift’s opening of their InterAct network to corporates in late 2024, introducing a service they call FINplus, which is designed specifically for ISO 20022 formatted payments. FINplus not only offers payment validation, as previously offered for MT101 payments, but it adds a critical new feature - a payment tracker managed by Swift so that corporates can know the most recent status of their sent payments. The enhancement is that the tracking capability is supported by Swift, rather than reliance on banks to (hopefully) share tracking data directly to corporates. Swift’s taking responsibility for payment tracking will deliver more consistent and reliable payment status updates, eliminating a blind spot for accounts payable, treasury and procurement teams. 

Reducing FX costs

Another recent innovation in cross-border payments is banks - and non-banks - attacking the significant FX spreads that have traditionally been charged to corporates for moving money across borders. Still to this day, many corporates do not know the FX rate that will be applied to an international payment before the payment is approved and sent to the bank. This is starting to change, though, as banks recognise the opportunity to compete on price and are investing in services within bank portals and via integrated treasury management systems to share FX rates in advance of payment transmission. This competitiveness has already reduced costs by up to 50% with the potential for more as an increasing number of non-banks enter the cross-border payments space. The only challenge for corporate IT teams is to ensure that the finance team’s technology, whether ERP or treasury system, is able to integrate the FX rates pre-payment. If they are, then FX rate transparency is a big win for the office of the CFO.

Blockchain and Stablecoins

The latest innovation is for banks and Fintechs to leverage blockchain technology to facilitate cheaper and quicker international payments. In many cases, these solutions rely on stablecoins pegged to the customer’s base currency, such as USD. Stablecoins can be bank-supported, such as JPM Coin, or independent stablecoins such as Tether or USDC. For cross-border payments specifically, a ‘stablecoin sandwich’ offers an immediate transaction in and out of the stablecoin, where neither the corporate nor the beneficiary is holding the digital currency. The payee pays in USD, for example, and the beneficiary receives their local fiat currency. These innovative services, which can be offered by global banks as well as Fintech organisations, further reduce FX spreads and are increasingly proving to accelerate the payment journey by hours and sometimes even days. While there remains a comfort factor for Treasurers and Controllers due to a lack of knowledge and trust in stablecoins and blockchains, for those who have moved in this direction, the benefits have been valuable. 

The good news for IT teams is that most treasury systems and ERP platforms make the stablecoin user experience the same as any other payment transaction, including the validation, governance and fraud detection to ensure that only in-policy authorised payments are remitted via these new channels.

In summary, technology has improved cross-border payments for CFOs, and the available technology that IT teams have within their ERP ecosystem offers a cheaper, predictable and faster global payment experience.