February 2026
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On the Road to Better Cross-border Payments: How is Australia Travelling?
Cross-border payments are generally more expensive, more opaque and slower than domestic payments. However, there are initiatives underway in Australia and internationally to address these challenges. The G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-border Payments outlines an ambitious set of quantitative targets for improving cross-border payments, underpinned by priority actions to drive progress. In Australia, progress towards the targets has been gradual but significant milestones have been achieved on several priority actions, including enhancing transparency for users, upgrading payments messaging and leveraging Australia’s fast payment system to speed up inbound cross-border payments. Despite these important steps, there remains work to be done by the payments industry to drive further progress on the road to better cross-border payments.
Recent Changes in Credit Markets and Their Implications for Monetary Policy
Changes in credit markets since the pandemic have had an important influence on monetary policy transmission. Lower bank funding costs relative to the cash rate, narrower lending rate spreads, and increased business credit supply have made financial conditions less restrictive than they otherwise would have been for a given level of the cash rate, supporting stronger credit growth. While some drivers of these developments are cyclical, others appear to reflect more persistent structural changes. These developments may have contributed to an increase in the neutral interest rate since the pandemic, although global developments also appear to be playing an important role.
Developments in Foreign Exchange and Over-the-counter Derivatives Markets
This article discusses recent developments in foreign exchange (FX) and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives markets, as well as key results from the 2025 Triennial Central Bank Survey. Activity in FX markets increased significantly in April 2025, both globally and in Australia. The increase was largely driven by an increase in hedging activity and speculative trading during a period of heightened market volatility. Globally, the Australian dollar was the seventh most traded currency, down from sixth in the previous survey. Global turnover of OTC interest rate derivatives increased in the three years to April 2025, led by strong growth in overnight index swaps. Turnover in the Australian OTC interest rate derivatives market rose to become the fifth highest in the world. The size of global OTC derivatives markets also increased.
Some graphs in this publication were generated using Mathematica.
ISSN 1837-7211