at the international level : stage 1 was an assessment undertaken by the financial stability board ( fsb ) working with other standard setting bodies, including the committee for payments and market infrastructures ( cpmi ), to identify the challenges and frictions in cross - border payments. the work, which was published in april this year3, identified seven underlying frictions that together contribute to challenges around cost, speed, access and transparency of cross - border payments. while a number of these frictions are related to technology ( such as legacy platforms, and fragmented and truncated data formats ), it is not simply a technology issue. it is a multi - faceted challenge also including issues such as divergent compliance checks, differing operating hours of payment systems and the liquidity costs associated with funding payments. stage 2 was the development of the building blocks needed to remove these frictions. i was delighted to be asked to chair the cpmi task force on cross - border payments which led the stage 2 work. to help to find solutions to this long - standing problem our assessment involved reviewing previous work undertaken, industry outreach and new analysis to get beneath the skin of what is really happening. it culminated in a https : / / databank. worldbank. org / reports. aspx? source = 2 & series = bx. trf. pwkr. dt. gd. zs & country = see annex 1 & https : / / www. fsb. org / 2020 / 04 / enhancing - cross - border - payments - stage - 1 - report - to - the - g20 / all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice cpmi report published in july 2020, outlining a set of 19 ‘ building blocks ’ necessary to enhance cross - border payments. 4 stage 3, just published by the fsb, is a roadmap setting out a high level plan on how to take forward the building blocks. i will say more about the roadmap later, but first i want to say more about the ingredients for success – the building blocks. an overview of the building blocks and focus areas the building blocks took a broad view : rather than addressing an individual area such as payment systems or compliance or regulation, stage 2 sought to bring together these issues allowing us to really start to address the challenge in a holistic way. the 19 building blocks were grouped into five focus areas,

##sb, but the imf, fatf, world bank and bis innovation hub are also among the owners / co - owners. source euromoney ( 2019 ) - https : / / www. euromoney. com / article / b1h6r02s16dnf9 / removing - frictions - in - cross - border - payments https : / / www. fsb. org / 2020 / 10 / enhancing - cross - border - payments - stage - 3 - roadmap / all speeches are available online at www. bankofengland. co. uk / news / speeches and @ boe _ pressoffice the bank of england is already making progress in a number of these areas to bring some of these building blocks to life and to show you that there is already significant innovation underway, i will outline work the bank of england is undertaking to address some of these challenges. the bank is involved through a number of roles – as a payment system operator, a supervisor of firms and of financial market infrastructures, and through our overriding mission to promote the good of the people of the uk by maintaining monetary and financial stability. my focus today will be on our role as an operator, and in particular the real time gross settlement ( rtgs ) service renewal programme of which i am the executive sponsor. the rtgs service settles an average of £685bn electronic payments each working day and we are in the process of renewing it to adapt to the changes in payments technology to make sure we have a system that is fit for the future. our vision for the renewed service blueprint was published in 20178 and is based on five key benefits : increased resilience, wider interoperability, greater access, strengthened end - to - end risk management and improved user functionality. while resilience is at the heart of the changes we also want to promote innovation within the payments landscape. as part of this we have work underway that will tackle a number of the existing frictions in cross - border payments, in particular those identified in focus areas c and d. we have, for example, undertaken research into atomic settlement mechanisms to develop the capability to facilitate conditional settlement of transactions to remove settlement risk. once introduced these could be extended to include payment - versus - payment settlement for fx transactions. the bank has already made progress in widening access to its rtgs service to include non - bank payment service providers ( nbpsps ) and as a result of