Banca d'Italia on ISO 20022 to stabilize payments in a fragmenting world
Cross-border payments are becoming a geopolitical infrastructure question, not just a banking modernization project. A speech by Fabio Panetta, Governor of the Banca d’Italia and Chair of the CPMI, frames the stakes clearly.
Cross-border payments remain costly, fragmented and operationally complex despite major advances in domestic payments. The consequences go beyond banking efficiency, affecting trade, financial inclusion and global connectivity itself:
“Lowering remittance costs to the G20 and UN target of 3 per cent would generate savings of between $7 and $22 billion per year, directly benefiting many low-income households and communities.”
One major response is now converging globally around ISO 20022 harmonization:
“Approximately 80 per cent of payment systems have either already migrated to ISO 20022 messaging for domestic payments or plan to do so.”
And more importantly:
“Full adoption of ISO 20022 – the lingua franca of payments – will provide the common data foundation needed for straight-through processing, greater automation, including in AML/CFT controls, and lower operational costs.”
ISO 20022 is presented as a foundation for a more interoperable and automated global payment ecosystem, creating a shared operational language across institutions, payment systems and jurisdictions. One particularly interesting implication concerns investigations and exceptions handling:
“Since 1-3 per cent of payments generate inquiries that typically require 5-10 manual touchpoints and rely heavily on free-format data, a harmonized and global implementation of ISO 20022 will significantly reduce manual effort and accelerate investigations, cutting resolution times by up to 80 per cent.”
This is where the conversation starts moving beyond migration itself. As payment ecosystems become increasingly structured and interconnected, the challenge shifts toward operational intelligence:
- Reconstructing payment lifecycles
- Identifying root causes faster
- Coordinating across fragmented systems
- Supporting explainable investigations and remediation
But the broader message of the speech ultimately goes beyond efficiency alone.
“Efficiency alone, however, is not enough.”
In an increasingly fragmented geopolitical environment, the real objective is preserving payment systems that remain interoperable, open, resilient, trusted, and connected rather than divided.
“Interconnect to stabilize. That is the guiding principle – and the only path forward.”
Source: Interconnect to stabilise: cross-border payments in a fragmenting world, keynote speech by Fabio Panetta at the Embassy of Italy to the United Kingdom, London, 5 May 2026. The chart in the speech is from Thomas Lammer and colleagues at the Bank for International Settlements.