Europe leads the world in cross-border payment interoperability as overarching regulations create coordinated governance frameworks that enable the implementation of unified policies across the region and allow for consistent improvements, according to new research by Thunes.

However, success remains largely insular, with inefficiencies emerging when transactions extend beyond the EU.

These findings come from the newly released Thunes Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index, which uses proprietary survey data and established benchmarks, including the World Bank Global Findex Database 2025 and World Bank remittance cost data, to evaluate 50 markets.

The index ranks these jurisdictions by overall score across five pillars:

• Economic Health, which assesses a country’s macroeconomic environment, as well as the human and social experiences of living within it;
• Digital Infrastructure, which measures how connected citizens are to the Internet and digital payment penetration;
• Financial Inclusion, which tracks wealth inequality, access to bank branches, and account penetration;
• Cross-Border Connectivity, which measures factors such as the cost of sending and receiving remittances, the use of instant payments, and and overall cross-border payment market development; and
• Market Dynamics and Progress, which measures the progress of various regulatory and government mandates to improve the money transfer market.

Eight European countries rank among the world’s top 10 countries in the 2026 Thunes Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index, powered by the integrated Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) network. SEPA processes cross-border euro transfers within 10 seconds across more than 40 participating countries.

Denmark ranks first globally with a score of 8.8, leading across Financial Inclusion (9.5), Digital Infrastructure (9.5), and Economic Health (8.8).

Denmark boasts an advanced domestic payment infrastructure, strong integration with European payment systems, and regional cooperation across the Nordics. Organizations such as the Nordic Payments Council, and initiatives like Vipps MobilePay exemplify this collaboration.

Vipps MobilePay is a digital payment company owned by a consortium of Norwegian banks and Danske Bank from Denmark that provides a payment platform, enabling consumers and merchants to make seamless, near-instant payments, including cross-border transactions, across Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden.

Norway ranks third globally with an overall score of 8.2, leading in Cross-Border Friction (9.2) and excelling in Economic Health (8.5). Norway is followed by Spain, the Netherlands, and Sweden at 8 each. Switzerland places eighth with a score of 7.7, performing notably well in Cross-Border Friction (8.3) and Financial Inclusion (8.2).

While Europe dominates the top 10 in the 2026 Thunes Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index this friction-free experience with SEPA remains largely insular to the Eurozone.

When transactions extend beyond the European Union (EU), interoperability often breaks down. According to 2024 research by the World Bank, it costs a business approximately 12 times more to transfer EUR 5,000 and 15 times more to transfer EUR 20,000 from the EU to the Western Balkans than among the EU countries.

This creates a two-tier system where users experience instant, cheap payments domestically and regionally, but face inefficiencies and high costs when moving money internationally.

Emerging markets redefine financial inclusion

Beyond SEPA-driven interoperability, the Thunes report also emphasizes how emerging markets with low bank penetration are leveraging mobile and Internet adoption to introduce innovative solutions like mobile money accounts and regionally tailored digital wallets, allowing users to transact seamlessly without relying on legacy banking systems.

Markets like Brazil and India exemplify this shift. These markets are not constrained by legacy payment infrastructure, allowing them to leapfrog countries with entrenched payment networks by building modern, real-time payment ecosystems from the ground up.

A study conducted by Juniper Research in April 2026 as part of the Thunes report polled more than 6,700 respondents across ten markets across the world. It found that Brazil has one of the highest usages of bank transfers across the surveyed countries, second only to India. Notably, 59% of those in Brazil use bank transfers daily or weekly.

This success in A2A payments in Brazil is attributable to the launch of Pix by Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) in 2020. Pix is a real-time payments system offered by almost every financial institution and fintech in the country, allowing users to transfer money instantly using Pix keys, or QR codes at checkout, eliminating the need for card detail entry and card fees.

According to BCB’s Deputy Governor for Licensing and Resolution, Renato Dias de Brito Gomes, about 170 million people use Pix in Brazil, or nearly every adult. The platform has reached more than 20 million businesses using the service.

Similarly, India operates its own real-time payment system. Launched in 2016, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) facilitates inter-bank peer-to-peer (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) transactions.

UPI is widely popular across the country, processing more than US$300 billion monthly, and leading retail payments by accounting for 85.5% of all digital transactions. The UPI ecosystem spans nearly 700 banks and serves 491 million individuals and 65 million merchants, making it one of the world’s largest real-time payment systems in terms of volume.

Despite their domestic innovations, both Brazil and India face challenges in cross-border connectivity. In the 2026 Thunes Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index, Brazil ranks 24th and India ranks 30th.

ASEAN economies are also highlighted for their cross-border payment interoperability efforts. These economies are at the forefront of multiple cross-border fast payment system linkages, with Singapore being a particular forerunner.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has been involved with multiple bilateral linkages, allowing users in Singapore to transfer funds directly to the bank account or digital wallet of another user in a different jurisdiction, using just a mobile number or QR code.

For example, Singapore’s PayNow system links with India’s UPI, Indonesia’s and the Philippines’ respective QR payments systems, Malaysia’s DuitNow network, and Thailand’s PromptPay system.

This is in addition to its involvement in Project Nexus, an initiative led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) that aims to develop a standardized and multilateral network to accommodate the different instant payment systems around the world and enable instant cross-border payments.

Globally, Singapore ranks second in the 2026 Thunes Cross-Border Payments Interoperability Index, scoring a perfect 10 score on Market Dynamics and Progress, alongside Brazil. These two jurisdictions are recognized for launching new payment rails, and spearheaded multilateral payment linkage projects.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Switzerland, based on image by arslantanoli via Magnific