Major players are doubling down on infrastructure building to meet the needs of a changing cross-border payments economy in Q2. SWIFT rolled out a new retail payments framework and moved its blockchain-based shared ledger into active development, while both FedNow and the RTP network announced plans to expand into international settlement. At the same time, more than one hundred countries are advancing local-currency payment corridors, and global banks are pouring investment into stablecoins and tokenized deposits despite limited real-world payments use.
Correspondent banking remains the backbone of international finance. But the bar for what community banks need to do to compete on cross-border payments is rising. In this quarter's Global Correspondent Banking Monitor, we break down what each of these developments means for community financial institutions.
SWIFT and a coalition of more than 50 global banks rolled out a new retail payments framework in early 2026, targeting some of the most persistent payment pain points in cross-border transactions. The Swift Payments Scheme establishes enforceable rules so that consumers and businesses sending money in key corridors including India, China, Thailand, Australia, Spain, Germany, Canada, the UK, and the US get clear visibility on costs and end-to-end traceability, with instant settlement where possible. More than 25 banks are going live by the end of June, with additional routes expected by year-end.
The backdrop matters here. SWIFT is under real competitive pressure from Visa Direct, Mastercard Move, and stablecoins, all of which are chipping away at its dominance in cross-border flows. The network has acknowledged that while 75% of SWIFT payments already reach destination banks within 10 minutes, the front-end and last-mile domestic leg still create friction. This framework is a direct response to that gap.
Impacts on Community Banking
The corridors covered by this initial rollout include five of the world's ten largest remittance markets, which means the new standards around speed, fee transparency, and delivery certainty will show up first in the corridors where community bank customers are most likely to be sending money. Banks that still rely on manual wire processes or outdated correspondent arrangements will find it harder to meet customer expectations as these benchmarks become the norm.
The practical takeaway is that SWIFT is strengthening correspondent banking, not replacing it. That is good news for community banks, but only if the infrastructure behind those correspondent banking relationships can keep up. The institutions best positioned to benefit are the ones that automate their wire processes, diversify their correspondent banking providers, and deliver on speed, transparency, and cost without having to staff up an FX desk to do it. Acceleron is here to help with that.
Read more about international wire transfer automation systems:
SWIFT is not stopping at the retail payments framework. On March 30, the network announced it had completed the design phase of a blockchain-based shared ledger and is now actively building its first iteration. The ledger has been in development since September 2025 in collaboration with global banks, with an MVP expected to go live with real transactions later this year. It runs on open-source foundations, essentially borrowing from the Ethereum ecosystem and adapting it for the governance and compliance requirements of regulated banking.
SWIFT is positioning itself as the interoperability layer between traditional correspondent banking infrastructure and the emerging world of tokenized finance, supporting both public and private networks. Rather than being disrupted by blockchain-native rails, SWIFT wants to be the hub that connects them all. Industry observers note that stablecoins, always-on commerce, and digital asset platforms have already reset expectations around what "fast enough" means for cross-border payments, and SWIFT is clearly paying attention.
Impacts on Community Banking
This one is not an immediate action item for community banks, but it is worth understanding directionally. The correspondent banking system is not going away; it is being rebuilt on faster, more programmable infrastructure. The practical question is not whether community banks need to build on blockchain, but whether their technology partners can keep up as the underlying infrastructure evolves. Modern correspondent banking platforms like Acceleron are designed to sit between community banks and the correspondent banking ecosystem, connecting to a marketplace of providers with evolving technological capabilities, so institutions can adapt to infrastructure shifts without having to rebuild every time the rails underneath them change.
Read more about Acceleron’s latest global partnerships with Banking Circle and Monex →
Speaking of real-time rails going international: the Federal Reserve proposed in April allowing FedNow participants to use intermediaries, including non-U.S. correspondent banks, to move money through the service. Right now, FedNow transactions are limited to two U.S. banks or credit unions plus a Reserve Bank, which means the service is domestic only. The proposed amendment would open the door to intermediaries in the payment chain, potentially letting U.S. banks initiate international transfers through FedNow for the first time. The board voted unanimously in support and opened the proposal for public comment.
The Fed's rationale is straightforward. Banks have been asking for cross-border capability since FedNow launched in 2023, and the Fed pointed to the Fedwire Funds Service as a precedent, noting that Fedwire has permitted intermediary use for decades without creating new risks around money laundering, sanctions evasion, or payment system integrity.
Impacts on Community Banking
Roughly 1,700 financial institutions are now on FedNow, and many of them are community banks and credit unions. If this proposal is finalized, it would give those institutions a practical new option: using a real-time domestic rail they may already be on to initiate the U.S. leg of a cross-border payment, which is a meaningful step toward growing non-interest income from international wires.
That said, FedNow would only handle the domestic piece. The international leg still requires a correspondent banking relationship on the receiving end, and that is where the real complexity lives. Acceleron's correspondent banking marketplace handles that part of the equation, connecting community banks to vetted correspondent providers and routing international wires automatically through an FX marketplace, so institutions are ready to take advantage of FedNow's expanded capabilities without having to build and manage those correspondent relationships on their own.
Read more about SmartRoute FX marketplace and working with multiple correspondent banks:
FedNow is not the only U.S. real-time rail with cross-border ambitions. The Clearing House, which is owned by a consortium of U.S. banks and operates the RTP network, has set a September 2026 target for going live with domestic correspondent bank activity on the network. That is the first step toward supporting international payments, including "one leg out" transactions involving a party in the European Union and "on behalf of" payments processed by a third party such as a correspondent bank.
RTP launched in 2017 and now covers more than 1,100 banks. It processed $1.3 trillion in 2025, up 428% from the prior year, partly driven by a transaction limit increase from $1 million to $10 million. There is real scale here. And because the RTP network is bank-owned rather than Fed-operated, participating banks have more direct influence over where it goes next.
Impacts on Community Banking
For community banks already on the RTP network, September 2026 is a date worth circling. The new correspondent banking framework would give those institutions a way to use a real-time domestic rail to initiate the U.S. leg of an international wire, which is a new tool for generating non-interest income from cross-border payments without a major infrastructure lift.The same caveat applies here as with FedNow: RTP handles the domestic piece, but the international leg still requires correspondent banking relationships on the other end.
Read our profile of Rusiru Gunasena, the SVP, Head of Business Development for Service Providers at The Clearing House:
Zoom out from the U.S. real-time rails conversation for a moment, and a broader pattern comes into focus. More than 100 countries have developed and launched fast payment systems for retail transactions, and a growing number of multilateral efforts are now linking those systems across borders, specifically to reduce costs, limit FX volatility, and move away from routing everything through the U.S. dollar. The Bank for International Settlements is developing Nexus, a hub that connects national instant payment systems across India, Malaysia, Singapore, and other Asian countries. Even Brazil is looking to integrate with Nexus. China's Cross-border Interbank Payment System now has roughly 1,700 participants across 190 countries, and daily transaction volume surpass 1.22 renminbi (About $179.7 billion). ASEAN has accelerated its Local Currency Transaction framework. And, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa) reaffirmed its commitment to advancing BRICS Pay by linking national payment systems and central bank digital currencies.
To be clear, none of this is a coordinated effort to dethrone the dollar. These platforms are designed to enable bilateral settlement in local currencies, reducing the friction and cost of always routing through a third-country currency. But over time, the cumulative effect could meaningfully narrow the dollar's role in cross-border payments and make an already fragmented international payments landscape even more complex to navigate.
Impacts on Community Banking
Here is the practical implication for community banks: your customers and business clients are increasingly going to expect the ability to send funds in the recipient's local currency, not just in USD. Instant payment systems are projected to grow from 16% of total payment transactions in 2023 to 22% by 2028, and banks that can only offer dollar-denominated wires will find themselves at a growing disadvantage as more corridors shift toward local-currency settlement.
This is exactly the gap that Acceleron's NudgeConvert is designed to close. NudgeConvert enables USD-to-local-currency conversion at the point of wire initiation, giving customers a transparent FX rate and settling funds in the beneficiary's home currency. This allows community FIs to meet evolving customer expectations, generate non-interest income from international wires, and stay competitive in a payments environment that is moving steadily toward local-currency settlement, without having to build any of that infrastructure themselves.
Read more about the NudgeConvert currency conversion engine for community FIs:
The stablecoin and tokenized deposit space is seeing serious activity from major institutions. HSBC received a stablecoin issuer license from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and plans to launch a Hong Kong dollar-denominated stablecoin in the second half of 2026. MoneyGram expanded its stablecoin balance product to El Salvador, with plans to extend across Central and South America, and separately partnered with fintech Nala to enable stablecoin settlement for payouts across Africa and Asia. In the U.S., SoFi announced plans to issue its own stablecoin, making it one of the first domestically chartered banks to do so and signaling that stablecoin issuance is no longer limited to crypto-native firms or overseas institutions. On the tokenized deposit side, Bank of Montreal launched a tokenized cash and deposit platform with CME Group and Google Cloud, while UK-based Monument Bank announced plans to tokenize roughly $300 million in retail consumer deposits on a public blockchain, with those deposits insured under the UK's deposit protection scheme.
Here is the number worth sitting with, though: a Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City analysis found that less than 1% of stablecoins are currently used for actual payments. Nearly half are held as trading assets, and about a fifth sit idle entirely. Stablecoin payments use is growing, and the GENIUS Act is expected to accelerate that, but the gap between investment activity and real-world payments volume is still significant.
Impacts on Community Banking
The institutions making the biggest stablecoin moves are large global banks and well-capitalized fintechs with substantial technology budgets and regulatory access in permissive jurisdictions. Research indicates that community banks and credit unions are the least likely category to issue stablecoins, and the Kansas City Fed data suggests the payments use case remains thin even at scale. For most community banks, the more immediate risk is not stablecoin disruption but falling behind on modernizing the correspondent banking infrastructure they already have.
The near-term opportunity for most community banks is simpler: make the correspondent banking infrastructure they already have faster, more automated, and more profitable through wire transfer automation solutions. That is where non-interest income from international wires and currency conversion grows, and it is the foundation that will matter most as tokenization eventually matures.
Read more about stablecoins vs tokenized deposits →
Acceleron is a modern correspondent banking platform that empowers community banks and credit unions to automate international wire transfers, capture non-interest income, and compete more effectively with big banks. With a foreign exchange (FX) marketplace and currency conversion engine, Acceleron’s API-first infrastructure helps institutions turn cross-border payment flows into efficient, revenue-generating opportunities. Serving over 200 financial institutions and facilitating more than $1 billion in international payments annually, our correspondent banking services and international payment automation solutions are pre-integrated seamlessly with Fiserv Payments Exchange, Aptys, and other leading payments platforms.
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