Via Trade Finance Global (TFG)
From a TFG and BAFT roundtable, this whitepaper examines the evolving role of banks in global trade as they navigate unprecedented disruption. Based on a discussion held during the BAFT Global Councils Forum 2025, it features insights from leaders in major global banks and institutions covering tariffs, shifting ESG priorities, regulatory complexity, financial crime, and rapid digitization in 2025.
To explore how far the industry has come since the G20 Roadmap for Cross Border Payments was endorsed in 2020, and how much more remains to be done, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) spoke with Deepa Sinha, Senior Vice President for Payments and Financial Crimes at BAFT, and Shriyanka Hore, Global Head of Industry Engagement at Swift.
Via Trade Treasury Payments by Deepa Sinha
Amid four packed days at Sibos 2025 in Frankfurt, experts from across the transaction banking space came together to discuss (among many other topics from a long agenda) how to make cross-border payments better. Today, trillions of dollars move across borders each day and global commerce has become more digital than ever, which means that implementation is becoming a central priority.
In the final hours of the conference, Trade Treasury Payments (TTP) made time to sit down with Deepa Sinha, Senior Vice President for Payments and Financial Crimes at BAFT, and Shriyanka Hore, Global Head of Industry Engagement at Swift, to discuss how far the industry has come and how far it still has to go.
The G20 roadmap for cross-border payments, endorsed in 2020, set a collective goal of making international payments faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more accessible by 2027. Even in 2025, fragmented regulations and differing market practices mean that a cross-border payment can look very different depending on where it starts and ends.
Via Trade Finance Global by Doga Usanmaz
Rerouted trade corridors, regional fragmentation, a currency arms race… these are no longer distant possibilities. They are active geopolitical and macroeconomic forces, reshaping transactional banking.
At this year’s BAFT Global Council’s Forum in Frankfurt, Germany, a panel of senior leaders from prominent global and regional banks explored how shifting political tensions and economic dynamics are creating deep uncertainty for the industry, and how banks are adapting their strategies, infrastructure, and client relations in response.
The panel, moderated by Nick Smit, head of financial institutions at ING Bank and chair of BAFT’s board, found that transactional banks are being rewired to confront political risk, digitisation, and technological disruption. The panel provided a region-by-region exploration of the subject, and some interesting parallels came up.
Via Global Trade Review by Jenny Messenger
The demise of the UN-backed Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) has highlighted how difficult it is to create single standards for the global financial sector, the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (Baft) has said.
The NZBA officially shut down earlier this month after members voted to end the alliance and instead use its guidance as a framework for setting net-zero targets.
The decision, which comes after a rocky year for the organisation in which several major banks exited, illustrates the challenges of aligning multiple banks across the globe, says Baft.
“What the disbanding of NZBA shows is the difficulty of establishing single standards that are flexible enough to accommodate the many bank operating models and regional variances on sustainability goals,” says Andy Price, vice-president, international policy, and sustainability and ESG lead at Baft.
Via Trade Treasury Payments by Deepesh Patel
The shift to ISO 20022 marks one of the most significant changes in global financial infrastructure in decades. ISO 20022 is a universal messaging standard that uses structured, machine-readable XML data to describe financial transactions. It replaces SWIFT’s legacy MT (Message Type) format, which has been in use for more than 40 years and relies on unstructured text fields with limited capacity for automation and analytics.
SWIFT introduced ISO 20022 for cross-border payments and reporting (CBPR+) on 20 March 2023, launching a three-year coexistence period in which both MT and ISO 20022 (MX) messages could be exchanged. This period ends on 22 November 2025, when SWIFT will retire MT messages in Categories 1, 2, and 9 in bank-to-bank communication. After that date, all cross-border payments, bank-to-bank transfers, and cash-management messages must be sent and received in ISO 20022 format.
These categories include common flows such as MT103 (customer credit transfer) and MT202 (bank transfer), which are being replaced by pacs.008 and pacs.009, as well as MT940 statements, now superseded by camt.053.
For banks, corporates, and treasurers, the migration enables richer, more consistent data for reconciliation, sanctions screening, and analytics. For the wider trade, treasury, and payments (TTP) ecosystem, ISO 20022 creates opportunities to enhance supply-chain visibility, improve straight-through processing, and align cross-border and domestic systems under a single standard.
BAFT’s ISO 20022 Migration Lessons Learned paper, drawing on insights from leading global banks, outlines key takeaways from this transformation. The following ten lessons summarise what has worked, where challenges remain, and how institutions can prepare for the final phase.
BAFT is featured in two articles in Trade Finance Global’s latest issue. To read the full articles, click here.
“BAFT Strategic Independence in an era of geopolitical complexity“
After more than two decades under the American Bankers Association (ABA) umbrella, the Bankers’ Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT) is charting a new course as an independent organisation. The
separation, effective September 2025, will be in response to an increasingly fragmented global financial
landscape.
Try to conceptualise the financial landscape of 1921. In the direct aftermath of the First World War, many European economies were burdened by war debts and reparations, particularly Germany under the Treaty of Versailles; the US emerged as the world’s leading creditor nation, shifting the financial centre of gravity from London to New York; global trade and investment were disrupted; and the gold standard, though still influential, was under strain as countries struggled to stabilise their currencies.
Also in 1921, the Bankers’ Association or Finance and Trade (BAFT) was established, uniting 10 banks in
midwestern US to expedite business transactions of their international trade customers….
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“5 takeaways from the BAFT Global Annual Meeting 2025: The tug-of-war between localisation and collaboration”
Navigating the trade finance landscape, with constant dodgeballs in the form of geopolitical tensions,
regulatory requirements, and threatening technology, requires considerable agility. But this year’s BAFT Global Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC, revealed the considerable opportunity in times of turbulence.
Navigating the trade finance landscape, with constant dodgeballs in the form of geopolitical tensions, regulatory requirements, and threatening technology, requires considerable agility. But this year’s BAFT Global Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC, revealed the considerable opportunity in times of turbulence…