Cross-border payments are being pulled in two directions: customers want instant, transparent experiences; regulators want safety, resilience and control. That tension is fuelling a new playbook where standards like ISO 20022, industry collaboration, AI and even stablecoins have roles to play; provided banks can hard-wire trust into the journey end-to-end.

It’s a shift mirrored in HCLTech’s latest research, Future of Payments: AI everywhere. Trust nowhere?, where 99% of payment leaders report using AI somewhere in their payment operations even as 91% worry about AI risks and 87% fear losing customers without real-time capabilities.

Regulation as a catalyst, not a constraint

Asked how banks can turn regulation into innovation, Dr. Roland Nehl, Head of Cross-Border Payments at Commerzbank, pointed to instant payments in Europe: regulation “helped us as banks to agree on a common standard and to provide something…with common rules and an offering to everybody in the Eurozone.” He also welcomed boundaries around AI, warning against a “wild west scenario where everything goes out of your control.” For Nehl, “this balance…gives us, in simple terms, the regulatory environment.”

Monu Kurien Mathew, SVP and Head of Strategy and Business Solutions at HCLTech, argued that regulation sets the rules and guardrails, but industry collaboration provides the engine. Industry collaboration, including partnerships and broader ecosystems are becoming essential, because they turn ideas into shared, usable solutions. As an example, he referenced “Icebreaker and Agorá:”

• Project Icebreaker: A public test by central banks to connect countries’ digital cash systems through a shared hub so sending money abroad is fast and controlled
• Project Agorá: A joint test by central banks and banks to use digital versions of the money you already hold in a bank (plus central-bank money) on software that can automate steps like checks and settlement. (Not the private “Agora” stablecoin company.)

The direction of travel is clear: banks are increasingly congregating around common platforms to standardize, de-risk and scale innovation.

HCLTech’s research echoes that dual engine of progress: leaders prefer bold innovation over incremental tweaks, yet 43% say regulatory uncertainty is the disruptive trend they’re least prepared for, underscoring why clear rules can accelerate safe adoption.

The instant expectation: Now for cross-border

Domestic instant payment is expected, but the challenge is making cross-border feel the same. “With ISO [20022],” Nehl believes that industry “has all the tools at hand [to deliver the necessary] transparency, interoperability and fraud control.” Combined with the G20 roadmap, he expects material gains soon: “in one to three years, we’ll pay in the cross-border world within an hour, and the last mile will also become instant.”

The urgency is clear: 87% of executives worry they’ll lose customers if they don’t support instant payments, yet only 20% report fully modernized, cloud-native, real-time data systems to support these experiences. The modernization gap is now a strategic risk.

Stablecoins, blockchain and the role of AI

On whether stablecoins are ready for the mainstream, Mathew cautioned: “stablecoins [are] still a drop in the ocean and less than 1% of all transaction's go through [them]. But [the] direction of travel is moving more toward that.”

He sees GenAI helping in two ways. First, “from a deterministic standpoint…[to] figure out compliance steps, fraud screening, pattern matching and the ability to deliver a better customer experience so that the friction is getting reduced.” Second, for risk: “it’s possible to look at the shift in terms of how the money flow is happening and anticipate exchange rates and liquidity movements.” Most of all, “it can bring in new vectors in terms of fraud prevention, which is a great advantage.”

That aligns with the data from the research: fraud detection and prevention is among the most common AI use cases today, yet 60% of leaders feel current AI fraud tools are more ineffective than effective, which is another signal that governance and high-quality data are as important as model horsepower.

Trust by design: Where the “big party” happens

As cross-border volumes grow, trust must be engineered in without adding friction. The core payment itself should be boring and predictable every single time. The real scope for innovation sits around that core: smarter fraud screening, automated compliance checks, richer data to verify counterparties and better liquidity forecasting using historical patterns. In other words, the biggest wins are at the start, or when a payment is set up and risk-checked, and the end, when it’s received and reconciled.

HCLTech’s research suggests the same hotspots: leaders expect the biggest autonomous gains in real-time fraud detection and resolution (51%), intelligent payment routing (47%) and automated compliance and reporting (47%) over the next two years.

GenAI for inclusion: Opening doors for SMEs and underserved users

GenAI isn’t just about speed; it widens access. Simple, chat-based onboarding can bring entrepreneurs in rural areas into the formal financial system with tools they already use. Once onboarded, AI can assess alternative data to build credit histories for “thin-file” customers, expanding access to loans.

For SMEs, the same capabilities enable more tailored offers, such as right-sized BNPL and personalized services, so smaller businesses can serve customers with the kind of customization once reserved for large enterprises. The upshot is that barriers will fall, participation rises and more people can confidently take part in global commerce.

The research underscores that data is now the currency of progress: 34% of leaders prioritize using data to strengthen fraud/risk, 27% for personalization and 20% to create new revenue streams, which are all critical to inclusive growth.

Execution is the strategy

The road ahead is clear. Harmonized standards and smart regulation set the floor, instant, interoperable solutions raise the bar and governed, transparent and explainable AI becomes the engine. But ambition must meet readiness. Today, 52% of organizations expect to operate as autonomous financial services within 24 months, while only 20% have modernized data infrastructure. This is a gap that could erode trust if left unaddressed.

The forward agenda is unapologetically practical: industrialize ISO 20022 implementations; co-create in collaboration; target the “beginning and end” of the journey for fraud, compliance and data enrichment and build AI guardrails that customers can see and believe. Do that, and cross-border can feel instant, intelligent and, above all, trusted.