Domestic instant payments work. SEPA Instant, Faster Payments, NPP, RIX Instant – these schemes have proven that real-time settlement at national scale is viable, reliable, and increasingly expected by businesses and consumers alike.
The harder problem has always been cross-border payments.
Multiple intermediaries. Fragmented liquidity. Settlement risk sitting open for hours or days. Currency conversion treated as an afterthought rather than built into the transaction itself. For fintechs and payment platforms operating across multiple markets, this friction compounds fast.
That is starting to change – and the implications for payments infrastructure are significant.
What Is the TIPS Cross-Currency Pilot and Why Does It Matter?
The recent pilot of instant cross-currency settlement on the ECB’s TIPS infrastructure tested atomic EUR-DKK transactions, where both currency legs complete simultaneously with immediate finality. This marks a turning point.
It demonstrates that instant cross-border settlement in central bank money is not theoretical. It works.
More importantly, it shows that once infrastructure can support atomic cross-currency settlement, the step to instant cross-border in a single currency becomes significantly simpler. In many ways, OCT Inst is a lighter implementation of that same logic: one leg sits outside the euro area, but without the added complexity of coordinating two currencies simultaneously.
That is why this matters. It marks the point where instant cross-border payments begin to move from pilot to deployable market infrastructure.
And – it raises a question the industry now has to answer: what does payments infrastructure need to look like to deliver this at scale?
Why Cross-Border Payments Are Still Slow and Expensive
Most cross-border payments still travel through correspondent banking chains designed decades ago. Each intermediary adds cost, time, and opacity.
“Five years ago, most fintech conversations were about front-end customer experience and speed to market,” says Michael Boel, Co-Head of Clearing Technology at Banking Circle. “Now the conversation is shifting deeper into infrastructure — because operational complexity grows very quickly once firms scale internationally.”
That shift is structural, not cyclical. Payment platforms serving global merchants, gig economy payouts, marketplace settlements, and cross-border B2B flows all need the same thing: fewer hops between origination and settlement, with more control over what happens in between.
How Direct Clearing Access Improves Cross-Border Settlement
The TIPS cross-currency pilot reinforced a principle gaining momentum across the industry: the closer you sit to settlement infrastructure, the more you can control.
Direct participation in domestic clearing schemes – SEPA Instant, SIC IP, Faster Payments, DKK TIPS, RIX Instant, NPP — removes intermediary dependencies. It gives financial institutions and their clients faster settlement, better liquidity visibility, and stronger operational resilience.
This is not just about speed. It is about architecture. Institutions that operate closer to the clearing layer can manage liquidity in real time, reconcile faster, resolve payment investigations sooner, and build treasury operations that scale with volume rather than against it.
What Does Instant Cross-Currency Settlement Actually Require?
Settling a EUR-to-DKK payment atomically — both legs completing simultaneously, with finality — requires coordination between central banks, clearing systems, and FX infrastructure that has historically operated in silos.
The TIPS pilot has now demonstrated this on live rails. But TIPS cross-currency is still limited to specific corridors and scheme hours. Delivering instant cross-currency settlement across multiple markets and currencies, around the clock, demands infrastructure that goes further.
“There is no such thing as maintenance anymore. It’s 24/7, 365,” says Boel. “The whole availability and the whole stability is a big, big thing. Our clients expect always-on infrastructure, and the systems behind it have to deliver that.”
How Regulated Stablecoins Are Extending Instant Payment Infrastructure
The next evolution extends beyond traditional clearing schemes.
Regulated stablecoins — including USDC, EURI, and USDG — are creating parallel settlement rails that operate outside scheme hours, across currencies, with near-instant finality. For institutions already operating on fiat instant rails, adding stablecoin settlement layers creates a 24/7 cross-currency settlement capability within a regulated banking framework.
This is not a replacement for SEPA Instant or TIPS. It is an extension. A payment that settles via SEPA Instant during European business hours can settle via a regulated stablecoin rail at 2am on a Sunday — on the same platform, under the same compliance standards, with the same counterparty.
Institutions building for this convergence — combining direct clearing access, multi-currency FX, and regulated digital asset settlement into a single infrastructure layer — will define how the next generation of cross-border payments operates.
The G20 Roadmap, ISO 20022, and the Path to Global Instant Payments
The G20 Roadmap set the ambition: faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more accessible cross-border payments. ISO 20022 created a common data language. Domestic instant schemes proved real-time settlement works. The TIPS cross-currency pilot proved it can work across currencies.
The next signal is implementation.
Each step builds on the last. And each step raises the bar for what infrastructure has to deliver. Readiness for OCT Inst shows how quickly that progression can move from proof to adoption.
“Ultimately, clients want payments infrastructure that grows with them operationally — not just commercially,” says Boel. “That means infrastructure that is more direct, more resilient, and built closer to the clearing layer itself.”
What Comes Next for Cross-Border Payment Infrastructure
The shift from instant domestic to instant cross-border payments is not a single event. It is a re-architecture of how money moves globally.
The institutions investing in that infrastructure today — direct clearing access, embedded FX, real-time settlement, digital asset interoperability — are building the payments ecosystem of the next decade.
For fintechs, payment platforms, and financial institutions operating at scale, the infrastructure layer is no longer a back-office concern. It is a competitive differentiator.
Banking Circle builds the infrastructure that makes this possible.
Banking Circle builds the infrastructure that makes this possible — with direct participation in SEPA Instant, Faster Payments, CHAPS, RIX Instant, NPP, SIC and DKK TIPS, and inclusion in the EPC Register of Participants for One-Leg Out Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst). This is not theoretical capability. It reflects infrastructure already operating across multiple rails, now aligned to the next phase of cross-border payments — where instant settlement moves from proof to real, scalable deployment.
Reach out to our team to learn more.
*Registers of Participants in EPC payment and payment related schemes | European Payments Council
