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The payments industry is evolving at pace.

Our clients and their end-users increasingly expect payment services that are instant and available 24x7. In our interconnected digital world, moving money seamlessly across borders is vital, whether the payments are big or small.

This new Citi GPS report brings together our latest thinking on cross border payments, looking at how things stand now and how the payments landscape is likely to evolve against this backdrop of rapid-fire technological advancement.

The report is based on findings from the Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) survey of about 100 financial institutions from around the world, including banks, FinTechs, and insurance companies. The report also draws on expert insights from Citi’s Future of Finance team, our industry leading TTS franchise, and external experts.

The Citi TTS 2024 survey results indicate that FinTechs on average expect to gain c.10% market share in cross-border payments from banks in the next 2-5 years, echoing results from last year’s survey, in which 89% of financial institutions’ management expect to lose at least 5% market share to FinTechs.

It looks at how incumbents and new entrants can emerge as leaders in the crossborder payments business. Agile incumbents that adapt to newer industry standards and emerging technologies are likely to retain market share.

According to Citi’s 2024 survey, nearly half the banks see room for improvement to extract higher FX revenue from their cross-border payments products. This could be achieved by innovative pricing strategies, smarter routing, and using data to enable banks to capture otherwise lost revenue opportunities.

Banks also need to focus on providing alternative payment methods with nearly two thirds of survey respondents seeing a demand from clients. According to the Citi TTS 2024 survey, bank management thinks delivering always-on operations (24x7) is the leading priority for banks over the next 5 years to address the painpoints of cross-border payments.

The report also checks in on latest progress in the G20 roadmap – a collective effort to make cross-border payments cheaper, faster, and more accessible.

Currently, cross-border payment systems use different messaging standards across different markets. The fragmentation represents one of the biggest obstacles to cross-border payments.

ISO 20022 – a global and open financial messaging standard for financial institutions, set by an independent standard-setting body has been adopted to address these challenges and create a common language for global payments.

The enriched data sets will also promote end-to-end automation through the transaction life cycle and increase machine-readability – enabling faster processing, greater openness, visibility, and interoperability across different regions and financial market infrastructures.

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