In 2020 the Financial Stability Board (FSB), coordinating with the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and other standard setting bodies, published a roadmap to enhance cross-border payments. In October 2021, following a public consultation, it announced clear quantitative global targets11 for cost, speed, access and transparency of cross-border payments coming into effect in 2027. The work is now focussed on the practical proposals for how the payment ecosystem – not just public infrastructure but also data, service-level agreements, rules and regulations – need to improve. Achieving the targets will require coordinated action from the central banks, the public and the private sector and if successful with enhance payments across wholesale, retail and remittances. There are two key reports due to be published shortly by CPMI, which centre on actions that can improve our national payment systems and achieve greater international alignment, and where we as central banks have a crucial role to play. The CPMI will publish its report onenhanced access to payment systems. As I mentioned earlier, greater access is important to get the best from public infrastructure. It can increase efficiency through shorter transaction chains, enable innovation and support financial inclusion. The report will include a useful and holistic self-assessment framework that authorities and payment system operators can use to review access policies. The second report relates to extending and aligning payment system operating hours. Greater alignment operating hours across jurisdictions could be an important key to enable faster crossborder payments for businesses and consumers around the world.

Victoria Cleland: The road to enhanced payments Speech (virtual) by Ms Victoria Cleland, Executive Director for Banking, Payments and Innovation of the Bank of England, at the Central Bank Spring Meetings, 31 March 2022. * * * It is a pleasure to be joining you today. And to have an opportunity to highlight the importance of a crucial, but in the past too frequently overlooked, element of central banking – payments. The ability to make payments safely and effectively is essential to each and every one of us. And has been for millennia – from the pre-historic communities exchanging seashells and grain to the vast number of electronic payment methods we have today. Effective payments are essential to both trade and commerce: research consistently finds that improved payment methods have a multiplier effect on economic growth.1 The Bank of England, in line with many central banks, plays many roles in the payments industry: as an operator, overseer, user (through our customer banking function) and catalyst. Today my focus is through the lens of the operator of the critical public infrastructure that underpins the functioning of all UK payment systems: the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service. I will describe how RTGS can help us maintain stability and promote innovation in the context of rapidly changing user needs; and how collaboration between central banks and other public authorities, the industry and the international community can deliver far-reaching benefits.