Payments benchmarks – the latest data and analysis
Payments
Payments Benchmarks 2025 report – cross-border connections
Benchmarks highlight progress on instant payments, ISO 20022 adoption and bilateral links
One of the major unsolved challenges of global payments is how to establish efficient, multilateral, cross-border payments. However, the Payments Benchmarks 2025 highlight the progress central banks are making, from upgrades to real-time gross settlement systems, to adoption of the common ISO 20022 messaging standard and bilateral connections between instant payment systems.
Charts
Asia-Pacific leads payments diversification
Benchmarking data shows wide disparity between geographies as payment systems evolve. The majority of Asia-Pacific economies (62.5%) are seeing the payment system diversify. By contrast, in Europe the payments market is largely unchanged over the past year.
For the full breakdown, use the benchmarking service’s interactive charts to explore the data.
Payments Benchmarks 2025 – model banks analysis
Data breakdowns shed light on organisation structure, RTGS upgrades and payments innovation
Payments data
View the full breakdown of responses to the Payments Benchmarks.
Previous years
Payments 2026
Payments 2025
Payments 2024
Payments 2023
Payments 2022
Payments 2021
One in five central banks regulates stablecoins
Most respondents are indifferent on use of stablecoins for payment
Number of unplanned outages in RTGS systems doubles
Central banks with longest average downtime typically plan to upgrade system within a year
Two-thirds of RTGS systems now aligned with ISO 20022
Over 80% of central banks aligned with CPMI harmonised standards
RTGS systems with broader hours accessed by more financial firms
Number of non-banks with RTGS systems access doubles year on year
RTGS systems’ running costs linked to operational hours
Two-thirds of infrastructure still operational for 7–12 hours daily
RTGS systems process nearly 200 million payments on average
Transaction values average $11.6 trillion among respondents
Number of RTGS fee-regulating central banks rises
More than two-fifths of retail payments ecosystem were diversified in 2025
Non-banks lack central bank oversight in some jurisdictions
One in five smaller central banks lack oversight on all payment systems
Some payment departments struggle with staffing capacity
Payment teams from Africa and the Americas report highest staff shortage
Payments units have median staffing of 30 FTE personnel
Central banks say they are boosting staff numbers to keep pace with evolving technology
CBDCs versus instant payments
Are technological and ecosystem advances using CBDCs and instant payments complementary or substitutes?
Nigeria to discourage cash withdrawals and make deposits easier
Central bank says reform package aims to reduce cash usage and tackle money laundering