As cross-border payments continue to evolve, financial institutions, policymakers, and payment providers are working to address longstanding challenges around speed, transparency, interoperability, and resilience. Industry discussions are increasingly focused on how collaboration and common standards can support more efficient global transactions. 

In this Q&A, Mariel Laxamana, Marketing Director at Payments Consulting Network and Merchant Advisory, speaks with Shriyanka Hore, Global Head of Industry Relations at Swift, about the trends and priorities shaping the future of cross-border payments. Drawing on her work with stakeholders across the payments ecosystem, Shriyanka shares her perspectives on the changing role of financial market infrastructures, the progress being made in payment modernisation, and the structural frictions that continue to affect cross-border flows. 

The conversation also explores the importance of addressing challenges in the “last mile” of payments and examines where greater coordination between industry participants and policymakers may help improve payment outcomes. As preparations continue for the Central Bank Payments Conference, Shriyanka discusses the themes that will be explored during Swift’s Policy Lab and the insights she hopes participants will take away from the discussion. 

Read the full interview below.

ML: Can you start by telling us about your role as Global Head of Industry Relations at Swift and how you work with stakeholders across the global payments ecosystem? 

SH: As a global member owned cooperative, Swift sits at the heart of the global financial ecosystem. We recognise that we have an opportunity to act as a convenor and catalyst for change. Our engagement therefore is anchored in strategic and shared priorities that require collective action with a razor-sharp focus on resilience, interoperability, and end-user experience improvements. 

My team serves as a critical link between ongoing developments within the industry and analysis of strategic forces across policy, markets, and technology that shape business operations, capital flows, and broader macro-level outcomes. I spend a significant amount of time shaping strategic direction and driving coordinated action across the industry, working with senior stakeholders including central banks, regulators, market infrastructures, banks, and increasingly non‑bank participants. 

ML: Can you give us an overview of Swift and the role it plays in enabling global financial transactions? 

SH: Today, the Swift network connects 11,500+ institutions across 220+ countries and territories, supports 40,000+ active payment routes in 145+ currencies, and operates 235+ market infrastructures worldwide. This reach and reliability support global activity across payments, securities, FX, and trade. 

Standards and data are a critical part of how Swift enables interoperability at a global scale. For example, Swift serves as the Registration Authority for the ISO 20022 financial messaging standard, driving higher data quality across the ecosystem and improving speed, security, and transparency. 

And finally, Swift has a repeatable framework that scales innovation for industry participants. By co-creating with the community, it has continuously strived to bring frontier technologies to its members to make use-case based adoption easier – cloud, APIs, AI, and most recently distributed ledger technology.  

ML: Swift sits at the centre of global financial messaging. How do you see its role evolving as the payments ecosystem becomes more complex and interconnected? 

SH: The payments ecosystem is being rewired in real time, becoming denser, more digital, and more distributed with every new rail, wallet, and token. As payments proliferate across these newer platforms, asset types, and actors, the perimeter of reach is expanding and the capillarity of money into local markets is increasing, with value now flowing through intricate linkages of digital channels in smaller, faster increments.  

Therefore, Swift’s role is progressively evolving from financial messaging to end-to-end transaction orchestration which includes driving transparency and predictability across interoperable networks. In September 2025, Swift launched a new retail payments framework. The rules will ensure upfront transparency on payment costs, guaranteed full value delivery, end-to-end visibility and a commitment to instant settlement where available. Many banks have committed to introducing the framework by the end of June 2026, with more committing to go live by the end of the year, and five of the biggest remittance markets in the world will be among the first to see the impact – Australia, Bangladesh, China, Germany, and India. 

That’s the first part of our parallel-track innovation strategy. At the same time, we’re introducing a shared, blockchain-based ledger into our infrastructure stack with an initial focus on enabling 24/7 real-time cross-border payments. The ledger is built for interoperability, which will be essential for the benefits of tokenised assets to scale across the world. We’ve completed the design phase of the ledger and are now building a minimum viable product, with transactions set to take place this year. 

We see this innovation as key to achieving the G20’s targets for faster, transparent, cost-effective, and accessible cross-border payments. 

ML: From your perspective, what are the biggest priorities for the global payments ecosystem when it comes to modernising cross-border payments? 

SH: From my vantage point at Swift, three priorities are central to the next phase of modernisation. 

First, extending instant, 24/7 capabilities through domestic real-time payment systems and one‑leg‑out (OLO) models. Domestic payment systems have set a new benchmark for speed, availability, and customer experience. The priority now is to extend these benefits into cross-border use cases, leveraging instant payment systems and OLO models to improve the “last mile” and enable near real-time crediting. This is not simply about speed but about ensuring that cross-border flows can integrate seamlessly with domestic infrastructures, maintaining continuity from initiation through to final credit. 

Second, establishing ISO 20022 as a truly common language across the ecosystem. Modernising cross-border payments requires a shared data foundation. ISO 20022 provides the structured, rich data needed to enable interoperability, transparency, and automation across jurisdictions. The focus now is not just adoption, but consistent implementation and harmonisation, ensuring that data can be used end-to-end, supporting better routing, reducing manual intervention, and enabling more intelligent processing across the payment chain. 

Third, embedding resilience through real-time risk, compliance, and liquidity management. As payments move toward real-time, resilience must be built into the flow itself. This means shifting from retrospective controls to data-driven risk and compliance frameworks – including pre- and in-flight screening, continuous monitoring, and automated decisioning. At the same time, institutions must be able to manage FX and liquidity exposures dynamically, ensuring that funding, pricing, and settlement risks are addressed in real time. The collective objective should be delivering payment credits in real time without compromising safety, predictability, or financial stability. 

ML: From your engagement with policymakers and industry leaders, where do the biggest structural frictions in cross-border payments still exist today and where has the industry made the most progress in addressing them? 

SH: If I were to quote insights from our Swift Global Payments Optimisation Index – the five key areas of optimisation would be: 

• Regulatory requirements 
• Capital and FX environment 
• Adherence to standards (e.g. ISO 20022, market practices) 
• Risk and control factors (e.g. compliance, screening) 
• Domestic infrastructure 

These areas are evidenced by measurable indicators including operating hours, FX convertibility, data quality, instant payment maturity, and statistically linked to payment speed. 

The Index identifies that capital controls such as restrictions on inflows/outflows, repatriation rules, and FX convertibility constraints are measured as top drivers of payment credit time delay. 

These controls are important for economic choices, but the way they are currently implemented may need to evolve, with greater emphasis on new approaches to identifying, reporting, and assessing risk. 

ML: The workshop focuses on identifying frictions in cross-border payments, particularly in the ‘last mile.’ Without giving too much away, why is this stage so critical to improving overall payment performance? 

We are excited to be participating in the Central Bank Payments Conference and to be hosting a Swift Policy Lab in collaboration with Currency Research. The workshop will explore our latest research, which uses Swift data to identify the structural frictions that affect cross-border payments. 

Recently, Swift introduced the Global Payments Optimisation Index, a data-driven benchmark that measures how structural frictions across markets influence the speed and efficiency of cross-border payments. At its core, the index links observable market conditions to payment outcomes, particularly beneficiary-side crediting times, to explain why payments are processed more quickly in some markets than in others. 

During the workshop, participants will examine strategies from the accompanying playbook and discuss how they can be applied in both domestic and international contexts. Building on the collective insights of the group, the discussion will focus on practical approaches to improving payment outcomes. 

The workshop will also provide an opportunity to identify areas for collaboration and coordinated action, drawing on the diverse perspectives and experiences of participants. 

While the index is based on payment crediting times observed on the Swift network, the frictions it identifies extend far beyond the Swift network itself. As new payment rails, asset classes, and financial platforms continue to emerge, many of these underlying frictions will persist. Attempts to bypass them through novel mechanisms may improve efficiency in some cases but can also introduce new risks that policymakers and market participants must carefully consider. 

ML: With policymakers, central banks, and industry leaders coming together in this session, what kinds of insights or outcomes are you hoping will emerge from the discussion? 

SH: For me, a strong outcome is when stakeholders leave with a shared view of the top frictions, not just a list, but a sense of prioritisation, and a clearer understanding of who can do what is next. Cross-border payments are a team sport, and progress depends on coordinated action across the ecosystem rather than isolated efforts. 

I’d love this discussion to generate two tangible outcomes: first, practical insights that participants can take back into their own organisations to enrich their own action plans; and second, a pathway for follow‑up and coordinated action at the cross-border level. 

Swift’s role is to help the industry convene, create frameworks of progress, and sustain momentum, but the real success is when the community collectively drives change at scale. 

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Author: Mariel Laxamana, Marketing Director, Manila, Payments Consulting Network and Merchant Advisory 

Mariel brings over 14 years of professional experience spanning news production, events, client servicing, and digital marketing. She began her career managing newscasts for a leading television network in the Philippines and now leads the digital marketing team at Payments Consulting Network, overseeing the global digital presence for both PCN and Merchant Advisory. 

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Payments Consulting Network is a media partner of Central Bank Payments Conference.

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