Original title: Modelling Full Interoperability of International Payment Systems: Towards a Unified Framework for Global Financial Infrastructure
Kengne Martial · September 2026
Sending money across borders is slow and expensive because international payment systems are trapped in silos. Different networks use clashing technical setups, rules, and protocols, which creates delays and extra risks. Researchers built a formal modeling framework to connect these divided systems directly, no matter their local laws or underlying technologies. Their design uses three connected layers: protocol, semantics, and governance. To make different networks understand each other and verify that transactions run smoothly, the framework relies on communicating automata and a shared ontology, which acts like a common vocabulary. Simulations of this unified approach show major improvements. The model cuts cross-border transaction costs by 40-60% and slashes settlement times from days to minutes. At the same time, it makes the entire global financial system far more resilient against breakdowns.
Imagine writing a letter in English but the postal service in the recipient's country only handles French. Your letter must be translated first, costing time and extra fees. Here, the researchers propose a universal address format and language rules that every postal service follows, so your letter is delivered directly and instantly. In this paper, payment systems are like different postal services, and the three-layer framework acts as the universal rules, enabling any system to send payments to any other without translation.
Cross-border payments today are slow, expensive, and fragmented, costing businesses and individuals billions in fees and delays. A unified framework could reduce transaction costs by 40–60% and settlement times from days to minutes, making international trade faster, cheaper, and more reliable. It would also strengthen the resilience of the global financial infrastructure against failures.
The framework is demonstrated only through simulations, not real-world deployments. It does not address the political and regulatory challenges of getting central banks and financial institutions to adopt a unified standard. The paper also omits detailed integration costs for legacy systems that may not support the required architectural changes.
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Modelling Full Interoperability of International Payment Systems: Towards a Unified Framework for Global Financial Infrastructure — Kengne Martial — International Journal of Economics Finance and Management Sciences — doi:10.11648/j.ijefm.20261405.19
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.