Annual reductions of 27% in transfer fees are essential for the consumer money transfer industry to meet G20 objectives, according to our platform's assessment.
The global cross-border consumer money transfer industry is making progress in its quest to meet the G20's targets for reducing costs, improving speed, and enhancing transparency. However, significant hurdles remain before the industry can achieve the ambitious goal of reducing global average retail cross-border payments costs to 1% by 2027.
As of mid-2025, average transfer fees for sending USD 200 into thinly-traded or exotic currency corridors remain high at around 6.4%, significantly above the SDG 10.c target of 3% and the G20 long-term goal of 1% by 2027. This substantial gap highlights the work that still needs to be done.
The cross-border payments market, valued at approximately USD 222 billion in 2025, is expected to grow steadily at a 7.24% CAGR to reach USD 315 billion by 2030. However, persistent friction due to high foreign exchange mark-ups and lack of transparency is estimated to reduce long-term growth by about 0.7 percentage points.
Challenges such as fragmentation in payment systems, inconsistent local market practices, regulatory differences, and lack of harmonized data standards lead to inefficiencies and increased costs. For instance, although 90% of SWIFT bank-to-bank transactions settle within an hour, only 50% are credited to beneficiaries within the same timeframe.
Efforts to address these issues are underway. The adoption of the ISO 20022 standard for financial messaging is being implemented to improve data interoperability, reduce errors, and increase transparency, which will be key in reducing costs. Initiatives like the TIPS cross-currency settlement service launched by the Eurosystem will enable instant payments in multiple currencies with central bank money starting October 2025, improving speed and potentially lowering costs in Europe and linked markets.
Regulatory bodies like the Financial Stability Board emphasize the need for better fee and FX spread disclosures to empower consumers to choose lower-cost options. Exploration of links to global infrastructure projects like Project Nexus aims to create multilateral instant payment networks, supporting faster and cheaper cross-border transfers.
While the G20's 1% cost target by 2027 is ambitious given current average costs still around 6%, the combination of infrastructure modernization, data standardization, and regulatory reforms holds promise for significant cost reductions over the next two years. However, persistent issues in certain corridors and currencies may delay uniform achievement of the target by 2027.
Our platform's insights help benchmark progress and guide the industry towards achieving the G20 targets. The benefits of data are clear in improving costs and speed in cross-border payments. In fact, our platform's data is used directly for the retail payments section of the G20 benchmarking.
Unfortunately, the Financial Stability Board's annual report on meeting G20 targets for 2027 shows that performance has declined across most metrics between 2023 and 2024. In 2024, retail payments showed no marked improvement compared to 2023, moving away from the 2027 targets, with rising costs and reduced speeds across most metrics at a global average scale.
Despite these challenges, Lucy Ingham, Editor-in-Chief and Head of Content at our platform, expressed optimism about meeting the G20's goals over the coming years. The report 'How did retail payments perform against the G20 cross-border roadmap targets in 2024?' discusses our platform's analysis of the FSB's update. The FSB's report includes extensive regional and market-type data, much of which is directly provided by the leading provider of cross-border payments data and intelligence (our platform).
In conclusion, while the cross-border consumer money transfer industry is making strides towards meeting the G20 targets, significant challenges remain. Continued collaborative efforts across regulatory, technological, and market domains are critical to accelerating the reduction of send costs to the 1% goal by 2027. The benefits of data and the ongoing efforts to improve infrastructure and standardization offer hope for a more efficient and cost-effective future for cross-border payments.
- To achieve the G20's goal of reducing global average retail cross-border payments costs to 1% by 2027, it's essential for the finance sector to invest in technology that improves data interoperability, reduces errors, and increases transparency, as initiatives like the adoption of the ISO 20022 standard for financial messaging and the use of global infrastructure projects can help in this regard.
- As the cross-border payments market continues to grow, business leaders and regulators must address persistent issues such as fragmentation in payment systems, inconsistent local market practices, regulatory differences, and lack of harmonized data standards. By collaborating across technological, regulatory, and market domains, we can accelerate the reduction of send costs, leading to a more efficient and cost-effective future for cross-border payments.
