These include: (i) systems integration difficulties where countries are at very different stages of payments system development, and (ii) the cost of meeting regulatory compliance requirements, for example those relating to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CTF), as rules can vary greatly between payment originating and receiving jurisdictions. The latter is a particular issue when it comes to remittances.
This poses challenges to some EMEAP economies and particularly some smaller nations in the Pacific area. We are working individually and collectively to try to address this challenging situation. One other noteworthy development is that several EMEAP members are collaborating with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and each other to develop bilateral and multilateral linking of real-time retail payments systems.