Moving money is a model for making money. In the next few months, big-brand fintechs that use the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) platforms will offer shares to the public, adding lustre to a technology boom as well as fizz to shareholder capitalism.

Everyone takes for granted fintech’s standard-setting innovations, from zero transaction fees, instant settlement and freedom from the fiddly chore of counting cash. But the transformation of domestic payments has not yet fed into cross-border payments. Dissatisfaction over delays in international money transfers to personal and business accounts, and a general lack of transparency, remains rife.

The RBI’s recent circular on facilitating faster inward cross-border payments stands out as a strong policy corrective. Banks were directed to notify customers immediately upon receipt of inward remittance messages, reconcile nostro accounts in near real time, and credit eligible inward payments on the same business day.

It also encourages straight-through processing to expedite international payments. This is not merely a regulatory exercise; it signals a determined intent to bring the cross-border experience in line with that of the domestic one.

This is easier said than done for individual banks building their own infrastructure. While domestic payment systems operate within a single legal jurisdiction and currency framework, cross-border payments pass through a much more complex network involving multiple banks, jurisdictions, currencies, reporting obligations, sanctions and forex controls, and payment market infrastructures.

This overlapping complexity can slow cross-border payments, but according to Swift’s own data, a large majority of payments reach the destination bank within minutes. In fact, 86% of Swift payments are conducted directly or through just a single intermediary, with flows spanning 150 currencies, 40,000 corridors, 4 billion accounts and more than 200 countries and territories.

While the “in-flight” portion of the journey—from the bank in the sending country to the bank in the receiving market—accounts for less than a fifth (20%) of total end-to-end time on average, more than 80% of elapsed time sits in the final domestic leg, the point between arrival at the receiving customer’s bank and credit to their account.

Local infrastructure, regulatory reporting, manual processes and operating-hour constraints exacerbate this gap. The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) focus on the beneficiary leg is therefore well placed and timely.

India is deeply integrated into global flows of remittances, manufacturing and services exports, trade finance, investments and personal payments for education, etc. For corporates, uncertainty in cross-border payments is a treasury concern.

For smaller businesses, it can be a large working-capital constraint. For households, the impact can be personal and immediate. The gains from smoother cross-border payments are therefore not abstract. They accrue to exporters, families, start-ups, banks and consumers.

The greater risk is that, at precisely this moment when finance is becoming more digital and multifaceted, it is also becoming more fragmented. New domestic payment systems, regional networks, digital currencies and tokenised assets will all have a role in the future of finance. But if each develops in isolation, the world will have more rails but with lower reach.

Parallel payment rails may appear to offer resilience on surface; in practice, they can add cost, complexity and compliance burden. Fragmentation is rarely neutral. It tends to favour the largest actors and penalise those who depend most on open access.

Research by Economist Impact, supported by Swift, estimates that financial fragmentation could reduce global GDP by between 1.2% and almost 6% by 2030 in the worst-case scenario, equivalent to $6.5 trillion, with nearly 280 million fewer jobs created.

Impact will be more pronounced in emerging economies. Cross-border capital flows are a practical reality of big and small economies; an interoperable financial system, then, is not just a preference for a particular technology - it is an economic imperative.

The solution is not to resist innovations in payment protocols, but rather to ensure that innovation remains connected and interoperable. Any future financial ecosystem will be plural: bank deposits, tokenised assets, central bank digital currency (CBDC), instant payment systems and traditional correspondent banking will all coexist.

The question is whether they can speak to one another securely and effectively. This is where standardization comes into play. Standardization removes potential for disruption and lumpiness in the chain of payments.

For the global financial community and Swift, the goal is not to replace domestic innovation but to connect it with other global and regional payment networks by providing common standards and protocols to facilitate interoperability across jurisdictions.

What is encouraging is recent initiatives on retail cross-border payments – strict protocols around upfront fee and foreign exchange transparency, full-value delivery, end-to-end visibility and instant settlement where local systems permit – these are now live and have the keen support of several Indian banks.

India has already shown how quickly expectations can change when infrastructure, regulation and entrepreneurship work together. The next opportunity to advance this is to help global finance make the same leap across borders. The prize is not simply faster payments. It is a financial system in which speed does not come at the expense of safety, innovation does not create isolation, and money can move with the same confidence as the commerce it supports.

Kiran Shetty, CEO & regional head, India & South Asia, Swift. Views are personal.

Moving money is a model for making money. In the next few months, big-brand fintechs that use the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) platforms will offer shares to the public, adding lustre to a technology boom as well as fizz to shareholder capitalism.

Everyone takes for granted fintech’s standard-setting innovations, from zero transaction fees, instant settlement and freedom from the fiddly chore of counting cash. But the transformation of domestic payments has not yet fed into cross-border payments. Dissatisfaction over delays in international money transfers to personal and business accounts, and a general lack of transparency, remains rife.

The RBI’s recent circular on facilitating faster inward cross-border payments stands out as a strong policy corrective. Banks were directed to notify customers immediately upon receipt of inward remittance messages, reconcile nostro accounts in near real time, and credit eligible inward payments on the same business day.

It also encourages straight-through processing to expedite international payments. This is not merely a regulatory exercise; it signals a determined intent to bring the cross-border experience in line with that of the domestic one.

This is easier said than done for individual banks building their own infrastructure. While domestic payment systems operate within a single legal jurisdiction and currency framework, cross-border payments pass through a much more complex network involving multiple banks, jurisdictions, currencies, reporting obligations, sanctions and forex controls, and payment market infrastructures.

This overlapping complexity can slow cross-border payments, but according to Swift’s own data, a large majority of payments reach the destination bank within minutes. In fact, 86% of Swift payments are conducted directly or through just a single intermediary, with flows spanning 150 currencies, 40,000 corridors, 4 billion accounts and more than 200 countries and territories.

While the “in-flight” portion of the journey—from the bank in the sending country to the bank in the receiving market—accounts for less than a fifth (20%) of total end-to-end time on average, more than 80% of elapsed time sits in the final domestic leg, the point between arrival at the receiving customer’s bank and credit to their account.

Local infrastructure, regulatory reporting, manual processes and operating-hour constraints exacerbate this gap. The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) focus on the beneficiary leg is therefore well placed and timely.

India is deeply integrated into global flows of remittances, manufacturing and services exports, trade finance, investments and personal payments for education, etc. For corporates, uncertainty in cross-border payments is a treasury concern.

For smaller businesses, it can be a large working-capital constraint. For households, the impact can be personal and immediate. The gains from smoother cross-border payments are therefore not abstract. They accrue to exporters, families, start-ups, banks and consumers.

The greater risk is that, at precisely this moment when finance is becoming more digital and multifaceted, it is also becoming more fragmented. New domestic payment systems, regional networks, digital currencies and tokenised assets will all have a role in the future of finance. But if each develops in isolation, the world will have more rails but with lower reach.

Parallel payment rails may appear to offer resilience on surface; in practice, they can add cost, complexity and compliance burden. Fragmentation is rarely neutral. It tends to favour the largest actors and penalise those who depend most on open access.

Research by Economist Impact, supported by Swift, estimates that financial fragmentation could reduce global GDP by between 1.2% and almost 6% by 2030 in the worst-case scenario, equivalent to $6.5 trillion, with nearly 280 million fewer jobs created.

Impact will be more pronounced in emerging economies. Cross-border capital flows are a practical reality of big and small economies; an interoperable financial system, then, is not just a preference for a particular technology - it is an economic imperative.

The solution is not to resist innovations in payment protocols, but rather to ensure that innovation remains connected and interoperable. Any future financial ecosystem will be plural: bank deposits, tokenised assets, central bank digital currency (CBDC), instant payment systems and traditional correspondent banking will all coexist.

The question is whether they can speak to one another securely and effectively. This is where standardization comes into play. Standardization removes potential for disruption and lumpiness in the chain of payments.

For the global financial community and Swift, the goal is not to replace domestic innovation but to connect it with other global and regional payment networks by providing common standards and protocols to facilitate interoperability across jurisdictions.

What is encouraging is recent initiatives on retail cross-border payments – strict protocols around upfront fee and foreign exchange transparency, full-value delivery, end-to-end visibility and instant settlement where local systems permit – these are now live and have the keen support of several Indian banks.

India has already shown how quickly expectations can change when infrastructure, regulation and entrepreneurship work together. The next opportunity to advance this is to help global finance make the same leap across borders. The prize is not simply faster payments. It is a financial system in which speed does not come at the expense of safety, innovation does not create isolation, and money can move with the same confidence as the commerce it supports.

Kiran Shetty, CEO & regional head, India & South Asia, Swift. Views are personal.