Why predictability — not speed — is the real transformation in modern cross-border payment infrastructure
Following the U.S. Faster Payments Council’s (FPC) release of B2B Cross-Border Payments: Expert Insights on Faster Payments Adoption, I sat down with Mark Majeske, Chair of the FPC’s Cross-Border Work Group and VP of Faster Payments at Alacriti and a lead contributor to the report, to explore a fundamental question:
The Strategic Pivot: Are we solving the right problem in cross-border payments?
The report surfaces important progress around adoption, standards, and modernization efforts. But it also highlights a deeper tension within B2B cross-border flows — one that goes beyond speed.
Ask any treasury team what causes the most stress in cross-border payments, and the answer isn’t speed. It’s uncertainty.
The “Information Gap” in Legacy Rails:
- Arrival Uncertainty: When funds will arrive
- FX Volatility: The final amount after FX
- Compliance Friction: Whether compliance will stall a transaction
- Zero Visibility: Where the payment is when a supplier calls
For decades, U.S. cross-border payments were designed to contain risk, not eliminate uncertainty. They were operational plumbing– necessary, functional, largely invisible. The modernization conversation is no longer about making cross-border payments faster. It’s about making them predictable.
The friction in cross-border payments isn’t theoretical. I experienced it firsthand. I once processed a VAT refund in South Africa. The refund was confirmed as sent. But my bank had no record of receiving it.
After weeks of investigation, the issue surfaced: the account information I provided was technically correct—but not configured for that specific cross-border receipt format. The sending authority couldn’t retract the transfer. My bank couldn’t redirect it. The funds weren’t stolen. They weren’t lost in transit. They fell into a structural gap. Multiply that complexity across global B2B supply chains, and the issue is not an exception. It’s architectural.
Beyond Latency: Why Speed Is No Longer a Differentiator
Between 2016 and 2022, as real-time payment networks accelerated domestically, many believed cross-border modernization would follow the same playbook: reduce latency. But even as faster capabilities emerged, the deeper friction points remained:
- Liquidity stayed fragmented across jurisdictions
- FX outcomes weren’t locked end-to-end
- Compliance screening introduced unpredictable delays
- Payment data degraded across systems
“Speed is table stakes,” Mark noted. “The strategic battle is around structure.” Faster settlement does not fix fragmented architecture. When liquidity is scattered, FX treatment varies by corridor, and data standards break across systems, acceleration simply compresses uncertainty — it does not remove it.
Businesses can operate within defined timelines. What destabilizes them is variability — in timing, in final amounts, and in visibility.
What Predictability Actually Provides
When companies can reliably forecast exact settlement timing and final net amounts, the operational impact extends far beyond treasury:
- Liquidity shifts from defensive to optimized
- Working capital becomes dynamic rather than calendar-based
- Forecast accuracy improves across the enterprise
- Reconciliation becomes automated instead of manual
- FX risk can be managed precisely
“When settlement timing and amounts become predictable, treasury shifts from liquidity protection to capital optimization. That’s a fundamental operating model shift,” Majeske shared.
In traditional legacy batch systems, liquidity functions as “dead” inventory, stockpiled to avoid shortfalls. Under always-on models, liquidity behaves more like streaming data, continuously orchestrated. This is not an incremental improvement. It is a redesign of how money is managed.
Fragmentation: The Invisible Constraint
Cross-border infrastructure did not become complex overnight. It evolved through layering. As institutions expanded into new markets, they filled capability gaps with corridor specialists, fintech partners, FX providers, and compliance overlays. Each solved a specific problem.
Over time, they created fragmentation from multiple:
- Intermediaries
- Liquidity pools
- Fee layers
- Fraud systems
These layers of complication are invisible to customers, but expensive and operationally heavy. Fragmentation drives hidden FX spreads, manual exceptions, compliance ambiguity, and inconsistent settlement outcomes. This is not simply a rail problem. It’s a coordination problem.
Trust Is the Real Architecture
Modern cross-border payments are not fundamentally a technology challenge. They are a trust challenge.
In modern systems, trust must be data-driven and real-time. Trust means you know:
- Who you are paying
- The exact amount that will arrive
- When it will arrive
- It won’t disappear into compliance limbo
- Risk controls operate at the same velocity as the funds
As Majeske explained, “When those conditions are met, payments stop being international. They just become payments.”
Data Is the Force Multiplier
In B2B cross-border transactions, structured data—invoice references, tax details, remittance information, compliance identifiers—is what makes payments actionable and reconcilable.
Without disciplined data governance:
- Reconciliation becomes manual and error-prone
- Fraud monitoring loses context
- Compliance becomes reactive
- Working capital visibility fragments
“Faster rails without structured data deliver only half the value,” Majeske asserted. Even with the industry-wide migration to ISO 20022 messaging standards, strategic progress depends on how consistently institutions populate and use those data fields. Simply adopting the format does not guarantee interoperability. Predictability requires disciplined execution across counterparties, not just compliance.
The Future of Correspondent Banking: From Friction to Infrastructure
Cross-border B2B payments are approaching a structural turning point. The institutions that lead will deliver predictable settlement, exact amounts, and seamless reconciliation with full visibility end to end. That is the new standard. When cross-border payments become transparent, reliable, and fully integrated, they stop creating operational friction and instead serve as competitive infrastructure that powers global business.
To explore the full findings, read the Faster Payments Council’s report, B2B Cross-Border Payments: Expert Insights on Faster Payments Adoption.
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