More than 70 countries now operate domestic instant payment schemes. The expansion has been rapid and the direction is clear:
- The UK processes over 4 billion Faster Payments annually with sub-second settlement finality.
- The ECB is extending TIPS connectivity to non-euro currencies, with Swedish krona and Danish kroner already live and Norwegian krone planned for 2028.
- India's UPI processed over 100 billion transactions in 2023, demonstrating that real-time settlement scales.
Domestic instant payments are becoming the default. Cross-border payments are not. The gap between what platforms experience domestically, where settlement is instant and certain, and what they experience internationally, where settlement is variable and uncertain, is widening. This divergence creates a specific problem for platforms operating across borders: customer expectations are being set by domestic instant payment experiences that the cross-border infrastructure cannot match.
The instinct is to solve this by making cross-border payments faster. The more useful goal is to make them certain.
The domestic instant payment revolution
The expansion of instant payment schemes has been remarkable. ACI Worldwide's 2026 predictions describe instant payments as the foundation of structural disruption in the payments industry, with stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and instant rails entering a phase of clear differentiation across retail, B2B, and cross-border use cases.
The ECB has approved exploratory work on linking TIPS with Switzerland's SIC instant payment system, extending instant settlement across borders within Europe. TIPS already settles instant payments not only in euros but also in Swedish krona and Danish kroner, with the Norwegian krone expected to join in 2028.
The common thread across these systems is certainty. When a UK business sends a Faster Payment, it knows the funds will be credited within seconds. The sender receives confirmation. The recipient sees the funds. The settlement is final. There is no processing queue, no intermediary holding funds, no uncertainty about timing.
The cross-border gap
Cross-border payments do not offer this certainty. A payment from London to Lagos still travels through a correspondent chain where each intermediary processes on its own schedule. As Payments Dive reported in December 2025, G20 member countries will likely not meet their cross-border payment targets by 2027, with the BIS noting that technological innovation alone will not facilitate progress because the challenges lie in governance across borders and misalignment of incentives among stakeholders.
The Paypers' detailed analysis of the G20 KPIs quantifies the gap: only 35.4% of cross-border payments are completed within one hour, a full 39.6 percentage points below the 75% target. Average costs remain above the 1% benchmark for retail payments. The FSB now openly concedes that satisfactory improvements at the global level are unlikely to align with the 2027 timetable.
The cross-border gap is not primarily a technology problem. Domestic instant payment schemes prove that the technology for instant, certain settlement exists. The gap exists because cross-border payments pass through correspondent banking infrastructure designed for a different purpose, where clearing competes with lending for institutional priority.
Linking instant systems does not solve the problem
A natural assumption is that linking domestic instant payment systems across borders will close the gap. The ECB's TIPS/SIC exploration, bilateral linkages between Southeast Asian schemes, and similar initiatives all pursue this approach.
These initiatives are valuable. They can reduce the number of intermediaries in specific corridors. But they face a fundamental constraint: linking two instant systems creates an instant messaging channel between them. It does not create instant settlement unless the clearing and custody infrastructure at each end also supports it.
A payment instruction that travels instantly from the UK's Faster Payments to Brazil's PIX still requires FX conversion, compliance processing, and fund release at each end. If the institutions at each end are traditional correspondent banks, the processing at the edges adds the same delays that exist today, regardless of how fast the message travels between them.
The RedCompass Labs payments outlook notes that 2025 was about making instant payments work, while 2026 is about making them work properly, including addressing verification of payee requirements and the friction they introduce. Even within domestic instant payment systems, the operational complexity of real-time processing is not trivial. Extending it across borders multiplies that complexity.
Certainty at the edges
The institutions that close the cross-border settlement gap will not be the networks or the messaging providers. They will be the institutions at each end of the payment, the ones that actually hold and release funds.
When the institution at the start of a payment and the institution at the end are both designed for clearing, with no competing balance sheet priorities, the settlement at each edge becomes predictable. The messaging between them can use any channel: SWIFT, a linked instant payment scheme, or a blockchain-based settlement layer. The certainty comes from the institutions, not the rails.
This is where specialist clearing infrastructure provides multi-currency clearing with defined settlement windows. The platform knows when the payment will be initiated, when the FX conversion will occur, and when the funds will be credited. The certainty is in the infrastructure, not in the hope that each correspondent in the chain will process quickly.
For payroll and EOR platforms with fixed pay dates, and for fintech and PSP platforms promising their clients predictable settlement, this certainty is a product-level differentiator. The platform that can commit to a settlement window wins over the platform that can only commit to "typically within one business day."
Infrastructure for the expectation gap
The divergence between domestic instant payment expectations and cross-border settlement reality will only grow as more countries adopt instant schemes. Platforms that solve for certainty at the edges of the correspondent chain, rather than waiting for networks to solve it end-to-end, will have a structural advantage.
Specialist clearing infrastructure with predictable settlement across markets, named custody accounts, and cash management infrastructure provides this capability for platforms operating across borders. Domestic instant payments have demonstrated that settlement certainty is technically achievable. The remaining constraint is the clearing infrastructure at each end of the cross-border chain.
