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Improving Global Financial Inclusion: Implementing Open and Standardised API for Cross-Border Payments

Policy Brief Andi Nugroho, Suhono Harso Supangkat

This Policy Brief was first published in https://t20ind.org

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Financial exclusion remains one of the main challenges to eradicating poverty and enabling income equality worldwide. The G20 has shown support for new technologies in the financial domain, and in October 2020 introduced a roadmap to enhance cross-border payments and address challenges in the market.1 Interoperability between systems is now enabled via the advance development of application programming interfaces (APIs) within payment systems. Open and harmonised APIs have allowed network-neutral and cross-technology platforms to carry out financial data exchange while tackling system sustainability issues by providing them a single, standardised set of APIs rather than customised APIs. Through open and harmonised APIs, improved and expanded financial services can be offered to the public. These financial services could enable a higher level of financial inclusion globally, thus reducing the digital access gap within and between countries.

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