Payment and settlement systems are mechanisms designed to facilitate the clearing and settlement of monetary and other financial transactions. Secure, affordable, and accessible payment systems and services promote development, maintain financial stability, and help expand financial inclusion.

The development and implementation of safe, sound, and efficient national payment systems and financial market infrastructure (FMI) is a key component of the World Bank Group’s work to reduce poverty and promote shared prosperity. Secure, affordable, and accessible payment systems and services help expand financial inclusion, promote development, and maintain financial stability.

Payment systems and FMIs are mechanisms designed to facilitate the clearing and settlement of money and other financial transactions. Safe, reliable, and efficient payment systems and FMIs:

• Support financial stability by mitigating the risks associated with financial transactions and facilitating the smooth flow of payments and the efficient functioning of financial markets.
• To promote economic efficiency by facilitating the smooth flow of payments, which is the basis of economic activity, and to foster the development of the financial sector by increasing consumer confidence in the use of money and payment services.
• Enable access to transactional accounts as a means of safely storing value and making and receiving payments, thereby helping to realize the World Bank Group’s vision of universal financial access (UFA) and promote financial inclusion.
• Promote transparency and efficiency in international remittance markets.
• Support the digitization of public payments as part of cross-cutting work in areas such as social protection, e-government, and public financial management reforms. The work covers all parts of revenue and expenditure collection, including large-scale applications such as tax collection, public sector payroll, public procurement, and other government-to-person (G2P) payments.
• Support critical reforms in fragile and conflict-affected states by helping to launch economic activity and social protection programs for vulnerable populations and by helping to channel remittances after natural disasters to support relief efforts.
• The World Bank works to improve the safety, soundness, and efficiency of payment systems and FMIs by providing financial and technical assistance and policy advice to client governments. The Bank contributes to the establishment, evaluation, and implementation of international standards. The Bank also develops and disseminates knowledge about payment systems.

The World Bank’s financial and technical assistance covers the entire area of the national payment system and FMI, such as the institutional and infrastructural arrangements in the financial system for initiating and transmitting monetary claims-from the legal framework to payment infrastructure, securities and derivatives, technical standards, market structure, and competition, supervision, and cooperation. This includes the adoption of new technologies and new approaches, such as rapidly evolving FinTech developments such as faster payments, open APIs, QR codes, and distributed ledger technologies for efficiency and inclusion.

Increasingly, new forms of financial infrastructure, such as digital identifier infrastructures for the financial sector, KYC registries, bill payment infrastructures, receivables, and e-invoicing platforms, are becoming closely linked to payment and market infrastructures. Support for these new types of financial infrastructure is also included in the World Bank’s financial and technical assistance programs.

Over the past decade, we have supported more than 120 countries with payments, remittances, and market infrastructure through advisory services and lending projects.