On August 5 the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPIM) published its Work Programme for 2021-2022 outlining its strategic priorities for monitoring and analysis, policy work, and standard setting and implementation activities.

Two principal themes were announced covering the subsequent objectives:

1. Shaping the future of payments by

• Enhancing cross-border payments. The Committee acknowledges longstanding issues in cross-border payments that are “still slow, expensive, opaque and not inclusive”, yet the industry has undergone transformation with innovative payment methods, interfaces and general improvements including digitalization.

• Analyzing and addressing policy issues arising from innovations in payments, in particular as they relate to the application of the CPMI-IOSCO Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI) to stablecoin arrangements. In addition, further analysis will focus on the potential for innovations such as Multilateral payment platforms, stablecoin arrangements and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to contribute to the cross-border payments programme.

• Monitoring changing trends in payments mainly the rise in digital payments and decline in cash shaped by changes in retail payments behaviour since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Evaluate and address risks in financial market infrastructures (FMIs) by

• Analyzing issues related to central clearing, including margin practices, resiliency and recovery, and access and portability

• Addressing issues relevant to the resilience of FMIs, including individual and collective preparedness, FX settlement risks, operational resilience, cyber risk, climate change-related risks and monitoring