How Long Do International Payments Take?

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), Bank for International Settlements found that most SWIFT gpi payments in its July 2020 study were processed within a day, although some took longer (2).

How long do international payments actually take?

The FSB's 2025 progress report says efforts have not yet translated into tangible improvements for end-users at the global level, and that the KPIs for 2025 show only a slight improvement at the global level since the KPIs were first calculated in 2023 .

Those shares describe gpi payments only and cannot be generalised to all international payments (2). The FSB's 2025 progress report states that the global speed of wholesale cross-border payments has improved, and that the speed of remittances has also improved globally . It considers satisfactory global improvement by the 2027 Roadmap timetable unlikely.

How long SWIFT gpi payments took in the CPMI study

Why does my payment take longer on some routes than on others?

Speed depends on the corridor the payment uses (2). In the CPMI’s July 2020 gpi data, 99% of payments from European country A to country B were processed within 12 hours (2). The mirrored corridor was slower.

Time zones add delay (2). Payments that travel west to east tend to stall overnight, so payments from a North American to an Asian country are substantially slower than the reverse direction.

Compliance can slow a corridor even when neither country relies on legacy systems (2).  Speed in the gpi data did not correlate with payment amount or with the number of intermediaries.

How much speed varies by corridor (2)

How much speed varies by corridor

• 84% Payments from European country A to B processed within 30 minutes — SWIFT gpi data, corridor from European country A to B.
• 7% Payments from B to A with a processing time exceeding 12 hours — SWIFT gpi data, the mirrored corridor from country B to A.
• 39% Payments from European country C to an African country taking more than 12 hours — Attributed largely to compliance delays in the African country.

What does a quoted payment speed actually count?

Published speed figures measure different things, so compare them only on the same basis . According to Financial Stability Board, the wholesale speed KPIs reflect the simple, unweighted, average speed of cross-border payments on Swift with a value of USD 100,000 or greater processed during Q1 2023. They cover the in-flight leg, from the originating bank submitting the payment to Swift until it reaches the beneficiary bank, and the beneficiary leg, from receipt until the end customer account is credited, and exclude weekends and public holidays in the bank's country.

The measure does not track the originator leg, and the wholesale threshold is set by the FSB for measuring progress rather than as a general rule for payments . According to Financial Stability Board, remittance speed KPIs are based on sending $200 and reflect only services for which speed information is provided to end-users. Retail speed is reported in three buckets: within one hour, within one business day, or beyond one business day.

What do UK payment rules say about execution and crediting delays?

For a paper payment order, the end of the business day rule in regulation 86(1) is treated as the end of the second business day after receipt, under regulation 86(2) of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (3).

The payer's provider may delay crediting the payee's provider while it makes enquiries about whether to execute the payment (3). Under regulation 86(2C), that delay must be no longer than necessary and in any event no longer than the end of the fourth business day after receipt.

On the receiving side, the payee's provider must value date and credit the amount after receiving the funds, as regulation 86(4) requires (3). Regulation 87(2) requires that the funds be made available to the payee immediately after they have been credited to the provider's account.

For transactions covered by regulation 85(2), the user may agree with the provider that regulations 86 to 88 (except regulation 86(3)) do not apply, and the passages we reviewed do not say which cross-border payments the provisions cover, so check with your provider which rules apply to your transfer. The credit value date for the payee's payment account must be no later than the business day on which the amount of the payment transaction is credited to the account of the payee's payment service provider (regulation 89(1)).

Sources

1. Statistics / Bank for International Settlements, Bank for International Settlements, accessed 29 October 2026
2. Enhancing cross -border payments: building blocks of a global roadmap Stage 2 report to the G20 – technical background report, Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI), Bank for International Settlements, July 2020
3. The Payment Services Regulations 2017, legislation.gov.uk, accessed 29 October 2026