Payments
Payments Benchmarks 2024 report – towards tokenisation
Benchmarks highlight optimism on tokenisation, hostility to crypto and efforts to upgrade RTGS
The Payments Benchmarks 2024 highlight how central banks see benefits in emerging technology. Nearly three-quarters of respondents think the opportunities from tokenisation outweigh the challenges the technology poses. Meanwhile, two-thirds of respondents are close to completing upgrades to the RTGS system and expect these to go live in the next year. Central banks are developing cross-border links, digital currency and other innovations to raise the efficiency of global payments.
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 data
View the full breakdown of responses to the Payments Benchmarks.
Previous years
Payments 2024
Payments 2023
Payments 2022
Payments 2021
Payments Benchmarks 2024 report – towards tokenisation
Benchmarks highlight optimism on tokenisation, hostility to crypto and efforts to upgrade RTGS
Non-banks in RTGSs: greater efficiency or more risk?
Policy-makers and practitioners from central banks in Brazil, Hungary, Israel, Romania, Rwanda and the US share their perspectives
Remittance fees unregulated in most jurisdictions despite high costs
But central banks identify opportunities in cross border payments integration
Banks are main instant payments participants
Email address is central banks’ least-used payment channel
Two in five RTGS systems experienced outage last year
Majority of central banks plan technology upgrade within a year
Around two-fifths of central banks planning instant payments
Central banks processed instant transactions with average value of over $124 billion in 2023
Most central banks resistant to crypto in retail payments
Just six central banks are open to retail payments being facilitated by digital assets like bitcoin
Majority of central banks increased payment system budget in 2023
Nearly half of central banks say resourcing is not sufficient
Average cost of running RTGS systems is $1.8 million
Annual costs slightly higher than last year’s benchmark
Most RTGS systems operate between seven and 12 hours daily
More than 40 institutions on average have direct access to infrastructure
Most central banks optimistic about tokenisation
Programmability, digital signatures and enhanced security are some purported benefits
Slightly over half of payments teams outsource services to third parties
Contracting central banks provide information on attendant risks and precautionary measures