• The Federal Reserve is adding cross-border capabilities to FedNow, allowing banks to use the instant payments network for the US leg of international transactions.
• Initial use cases include international payroll, corporate payments, insurance claims, and treasury management, with correspondent banks handling the international portion.
• The expansion strengthens FedNow’s position as stablecoins gain traction in cross-border payments, giving banks a faster, 24/7 option within established banking infrastructure.

The US Federal Reserve is improving its FedNow real time payment scheme this week. The organization is building out cross-border transaction support to allow financial institutions to meet needs of clients who conduct business across geographic borders.

Cross-border payment capabilities will allow institutions to support customers whose transactions involve sending and/or receiving funds to parties outside of the US for international payroll, corporate payments for global businesses, international insurance claims, and global treasury management. While FedNow is covering the US leg of the transaction, the organization is leveraging correspondent banking relationships to move funds on the international portion of the transaction, similar to how the Fedwire Funds Service operates.

“Cross-border transaction capabilities will give financial institutions powerful new ways to serve internationally active customers. After several years focused on growing the domestic instant payments market, this is an important first step toward meeting the global needs emerging across our ecosystem,” said FedNow Chief Executive, Nick Stanescu. “Participants have consistently told us that enabling cross-border use cases is a priority, and this milestone reflects our commitment to delivering on that feedback. It’s a meaningful step forward—and just the beginning of what’s to come.”

While the service is not currently live, a group of organizations will soon begin testing FedNow to send and receive the US domestic leg of cross-border payments. The organization said that all FedNow participants can adopt these new messages to support cross-border capabilities “soon.”

“Our upcoming integration with cross-border functionality supported by the FedNow Service reflects our commitment to providing financial institutions with a faster, more transparent solution for the US leg of international transactions, while elevating safety by un-nesting complex payments, screening each party instantly, and digitizing every risk and compliance process to deliver the highest standards our industry requires,” said Payall President and CEO, Gary Palmer. “As commerce increasingly demands instant execution across borders, we’re proud to support the infrastructure that makes this possible for our clients and their customers.”

FedNow went live in July of 2023 and now reaches 1,900 participating financial institutions, up from more than 1,500 at the end of 2025. While participation continues to expand, the Federal Reserve is still working to encourage institutions to activate and increase their use of both send and receive capabilities. Earlier this month, Federal Reserve Financial Services announced a new discount program launching in 2027 that will offer financial institutions incentives of up to $80,000 for enabling and scaling FedNow payments.

FedNow’s expansion into cross-border payments is strategic. While the network was built to give banks an always-on, real-time alternative for domestic payments, stablecoins increasingly offer many of those same benefits across borders. Stablecoins can move value around the clock without relying on the operating hours and intermediaries that have traditionally made international payments slower and more expensive. The Federal Reserve itself has acknowledged that stablecoins have the potential to become a faster, lower-cost alternative for cross-border payments.

That makes international functionality an increasingly important piece of FedNow’s value proposition. By allowing banks to use FedNow for the US leg of a cross-border transaction while correspondent institutions handle the international portion, the Federal Reserve is extending the speed and 24/7 availability of its instant-payment rail to more global use cases. It doesn’t eliminate the correspondent banking infrastructure the way some stablecoin-based payment models seek to, but it gives banks another way to deliver faster international payments while keeping settlement within familiar regulated banking infrastructure.

Photo by Alexas Fotos

• J.P. Morgan Payments selected Thunes to expand Xpedite Remit, combining its payments infrastructure with Thunes’ Direct Global Network for faster, more transparent cross-border payments.
• The partnership gives J.P. Morgan access to 12 billion bank accounts and mobile wallets across 100+ corridors, reducing the need to establish local connectivity market by market.
• Chase’s 94 million consumer and small business customers will also benefit, including through faster, real-time inbound payments into the US.

J.P. Morgan Payments has selected Thunes to expand its cross-border capabilities through the bank’s Xpedite Remit solutions suite.

The new suite of tools combines J.P. Morgan Payments’ connectivity with local, real-time payments rails and Thunes’ Direct Global Network to offer a reliable cross-border payments tool. The bank’s Xpedite Remit tool offers protection, end-to-end traceability, and faster payouts, regardless of whether the payment takes place in the same currency or uses a foreign exchange conversion.

The cross-border capabilities offer access to 12 billion local bank accounts and mobile wallets across more than 100 corridors around the clock. Cross-border payments have traditionally required financial institutions to navigate multiple correspondent banking relationships, local payment rails, currencies, and regulatory requirements. Combining J.P. Morgan Payments’ infrastructure with Thunes’ network will enable the bank to extend its reach into local bank accounts and mobile wallets without having to establish that connectivity market-by-market.

“Our clients want simpler, faster ways to move money across borders and to reach people through the payment methods they prefer,” said J.P. Morgan Payments Global Head of High Value Payments & FX, Gayathri Vasudev. “That’s why we are continuing to enhance our cross-border capabilities and further expanding our solution through the collaboration with Thunes. Building on milestones, like our recent progress with Swift’s retail payments scheme, we’re helping clients grow in new markets while delivering the faster, more seamless experiences they have come to expect.”

JPMorgan Chase’s Consumer and Community Bank will also benefit from Xpedite Remit’s expanded cross-border capabilities. The bank’s 94 million consumer and small business customers will receive faster payout experiences with real-time inbound payments into the US. 

“As customers increasingly move money across borders as part of their everyday lives, they expect the experience to be fast, intuitive, and reliable,” said Chase Head of Banking Payments, Ashish Ajmera. “These enhancements mark an important step in our efforts to modernize cross-border payments and expand the capabilities available through our broader suite of products and services, helping customers send money internationally with greater speed, transparency and confidence.”

Thunes was founded in 2016 as TransferTo and rebranded to Thunes in 2019. The company offers a cross-border payments and collection network that supports 80 currencies, enables payments to 130 countries, and offers 320+ payment acceptance methods. Unlike traditional cross-border payments providers that often rely on correspondent banking networks, Thunes offers a direct, proprietary global network. This direct network delivers faster, cheaper, and more transparent transactions and allows it to compete against players like Wise and Airwallex.

Photo by Tim Mossholder

• EMVCo released a draft framework for card-based agentic payments designed to promote secure, interoperable, and scalable transactions involving AI agents.
• The framework introduces Intent Services, a shared layer that would help payment participants register, retrieve, reference, and update consumer-authorized intent as it changes over time.
• EMVCo is exploring additional agentic payment capabilities, including Know Your Agent (KYA) and Agentic Transaction Indicators, while seeking industry feedback on the draft through September 30.

Global technical organization EMVCo released the draft of a new framework to help promote secure, interoperable and scalable agentic payments. 

Much of the conversation around agentic commerce has centered around the liability that occurs when an AI agent makes a purchase on the consumer’s behalf. EMVCo has discovered that, in agentic payment scenarios where intent needs to be managed over time, such as recurring purchases, cumulative budgets, and post-transaction activities, users may need to offer access to a shared intent “state,” which means multiple participants in a transaction may need a consistent way to determine what the consumer authorized, whether that authorization is still valid, and how much of it has already been used.

To address this, EMVCo’s proposed framework introduces “Intent Services,” a shared layer that would allow payment participants to register, retrieve, reference, and update consumer-authorized intent before, during, and after a transaction.

The framework is designed to complement, rather than replace, existing approaches to proving consumer intent. While cryptographic solutions such as Verifiable Intent can provide assurance that a consumer authorized an agent to act, EMVCo’s Intent Services would provide a common coordination point for participants to interpret and manage that authorization as it evolves over time. The framework outlines ecosystem roles and data fields for registering intent, maintaining lifecycle and state information, and allowing authorized parties to retrieve intent-related data.

“Card-based agentic payments require a globally interoperable foundation that consumers, merchants and issuers can all trust,” said EMVCo Executive Committee Chair Junya Tanaka. “This publication marks an important step forward by outlining a consistent approach for establishing and communicating intent alongside payment-related information, and we encourage participants from across the industry to share their feedback to shape its ongoing development.”

EMVCo has a dedicated Agentic Payments Task Force and is actively engaging with stakeholders, including EMVCo Associates and Subscribers. The organization is also collaborating closely with other industry partners such as the FIDO Alliance, the OpenID Foundation, the OpenWallet Foundation, and W3C.

EMVCo anticipates that creating a common foundation for card-based agentic payments will help identify potential future enhancements to other EMV technologies such as EMV 3-D Secure (3DS), EMV Payment Tokenization, EMV Secure Remote Commerce (SRC), and the EMV Digital Payment Credential (DPC).

EMVCo is also considering capabilities related to Know Your Agent (KYA) and Agentic Transaction Indicators for future publications. These capabilities could help payment participants identify the agent involved in a transaction, communicate relevant attributes about that agent, and signal when a transaction involves an agent acting on a consumer’s behalf.

Anyone interested in providing feedback to EMVCo’s draft framework can leave their comments on the proposed framework by Wednesday, September 30.

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash