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Cross-border payment reform - the silent transformation
Business Brief
|BusinessBrief December/January 2025/26
The clock is ticking on cross-border payment reform. With the SARB's new directive now in motion and the FSB warning that progress has been painfully slow, I see a rare opportunity for banks and fintechs - turning compliance into innovation and finally delivering on the promise of inclusion.
This year's Financial Stability Board (FSB) progress report on cross-border payments arrived with a familiar frustration. Despite significant policy advances, tangible improvements for end-users remain out of reach. For Southern Africa, the gap between what has been promised and what people experience is now impossible to ignore.
In April, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) issued Directive No. 1 of 2025, requiring all low-value cross-border electronic fund transfers within the Common Monetary Area - South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini and Namibia - to migrate to the Transactions Cleared on an Immediate Basis (TCIB) scheme by March 2027.
At first glance, this might seem like a technical adjustment or another back-end shift in payment routing. But as I've examined the implications, it's clear that this marks the end of an era where millions of people had no choice but to rely on cash couriers, bus drivers and informal money agents to send funds home or pay small suppliers across borders. For far too long, the smallest payments have been the hardest to move. TCIB finally changes that.
From cash couriers to connected systems
This story is from the BusinessBrief December/January 2025/26 edition of Business Brief.
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