Estera Sava, Senior Writer at The Paypers, shares how A2A payments interoperability initiatives vary by region.
Domestic instant payment rails have largely solved what they were meant to address: settlement delays for localised commerce, high transaction costs, and payment friction. However, by default, they don’t communicate with each other for cross-border transactions. A transfer that settles in seconds in Brazil, India, or the Eurozone still needs an intermediary the moment either party is in another country, be that a wallet alliance, a QR standard, a multilateral platform, or a correspondent relationship. In 2026, cross-border A2A interoperability is advancing at the governance, technical, and settlement layers, but not enough for banks and PSPs to support it.
Regional models for cross-border A2A payments interoperability
Each region is solving cross-border A2A interoperability differently. Europe is taking a wallet-based approach. EPI Company and EuroPA’s Bancomat, Bizum, SIBS and Vipps MobilePay signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in February 2026, committing to advance cross-border goals through a shared interoperability hub. Instead of merging into a single system, they’re preserving each wallet’s brand and UX, rolling out interoperable cross-border P2P payments in 2026, and ecommerce and point-of-sale (POS) payments in 2027. The goal is payment sovereignty and reduced reliance on non-European card networks by connecting solutions that together reach around 130 million users.
Africa is also working toward wallet-based connectivity, but its approach is structurally different from Europe’s, since African cross-border payments typically use different rails. In February, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) and Onafriq announced a Nigeria-to-Ghana instant, wallet-based, outbound payments pilot, without currency conversion, in partnership with banks and mobile money operators. The collaboration builds on the successful instant payments corridor between the two countries, launched in 2025.
Another approach involves bilateral and multilateral QR linkages. Brazil’s Pix crossed into Argentina in March 2026, letting users pay by scanning a QR code, part of a wider pattern of LATAM markets adopting the same instant payment model instead of building rival infrastructure.
Asia is approaching cross-border payment linkage in two ways: QR payments and fund transfer connectivity. For QR, the first such linkage was between Thailand and Japan in 2018, with eight other economies following later. In April 2021, Singapore and Thailand set up the first cross-border fund transfer connectivity, a model that has since been replicated throughout the region. In addition to bilateral approaches, Asia is also working on multilateral standardisation. Nexus Global Payments (NGP), the entity launched in 2025 by Project Nexus member central banks (India, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore), aims to establish and manage a multilateral instant payments scheme. The ECB and Bank of Indonesia serve as special observers, as they participated in previous Project Nexus phases.
ISO 20022 fragmentation and G20 targets: why instant rails interoperability is behind
Built for domestic applications, instant payments’ technical approaches reflect that, and despite their growth, they don’t fully comply with the messaging standards meant to unify them. Most instant rails describe themselves as ISO 20022-based. However, specific message versions, field requirements, and address formats differ enough between schemes that payments between two rails typically need translation.
This impacts the G20’s cross-border payments targets, and a BIS December 2025 assessment admits that the end-2027 goal will not be achieved, even if most policy actions assigned to international bodies have technically been finalised.
Interoperability also poses liquidity difficulties. Domestic rails typically settle on a prefunded, real-time gross settlement (RTGS) basis. The sending institution’s funds sit in a dedicated account with the central bank or scheme operator before a payment is sent, and do not settle on a delayed net basis. Extending the model across a corridor connecting several countries’ RTPs multiplies the prefunding burden across every currency pair a bank wants to reach instantly. Multilateral platforms aim to decrease the technical connections RTPs need to build, but this approach doesn’t work for liquidity. Someone must prefund each currency pair, and participants must decide how to address distribution. Until then, this remains an open issue for scaling platforms beyond founding members.
Multi-rail orchestration and fallback logic: the integration aspects behind interoperability
For PSPs and banks, orchestration is the main issue. Supporting instant, multi-currency A2A payments means routing a transaction across card rails, Open Banking payment initiation, and RTP schemes like SCT Inst, Pix, or UPI (depending on which corridor and currency it reaches), with fallback logic like network tokenisation built in so a declined or unsupported route doesn’t result in failed payments.
To accomplish interoperability successfully, banks involved in the payments chain must resolve fragmentation.
This editorial piece was first published in The Paypers' Account-to-Account Payments Report 2026, which features insights into global trends, technologies, partnerships, and the next phase of the A2A evolution. Access the full report to understand where the A2A payments ecosystem stands today and what’s next.
About the author
Estera Sava is a Senior Writer at The Paypers, bringing her expertise in content creation and editorial processes to the Audience team. Focusing on the ever-evolving fintech and payments landscape, she is involved in various high-impact projects and industry reports and coordinates the annual Account-to-Account Payments reports. Through her proactive approach and dedication, Estera helps drive the success of The Paypers' initiatives.
