The Bank of Italy published a paper in its “Markets, infrastructures, payment systems” series setting out an approach to extend domestic instant payment systems to support cross-border and cross-currency transactions via an overlay interlinking model. The proposal centres on a standardized protocol to enable synchronous processing of instant payments across different instant payment systems while preserving the immediacy and user experience of domestic instant payments. It rejects a centralized hub model and instead envisages a decentralized network, using an adapter or gateway to translate and route messages and repurposing existing bilateral connections between systems to enable direct interoperability.
Bank of Italy 2025-10-15
Bank of Italy publishes paper proposing a decentralized protocol to interconnect instant payment systems for cross-border and cross-currency payments
The Bank of Italy released a paper proposing an extension of domestic instant payment systems to facilitate cross-border and cross-currency transactions through an overlay interlinking model. The approach advocates for a standardized protocol enabling synchronous processing across systems, maintaining immediacy and user experience, and utilizing a decentralized network with adapters or gateways for message translation and routing.