India must rethink cross-border payments beyond corridors, put customers first: Deloitte

New Delhi: A shift from corridor-led expansion to customer-centric design forms the core principle needed to drive the next stage of India's cross-border payment ecosystem, according to a report by Deloitte.

The report outlined that future policy frameworks, digital infrastructure, and regulatory platforms require realignment around distinct user cohorts rather than generic, corridor-focused rollouts.

"India has built many of the foundational elements of a globally competitive cross-border payments ecosystem. However, the next phase of growth will be determined by the design principles that shape future policy, infrastructure and ecosystem decisions," the report said.


As cross-border payments evolve towards always-on, interconnected networks, future policy discussions will sharpen focus on questions beyond payment speed and cost.

The Deloitte report mentioned that issues such as the "allocation of fraud liability across jurisdictions, cross-border data sharing and localisation requirements, governance of tokenised settlement networks and mechanisms for supporting real-time beneficiary credit while preserving settlement certainty will play an important role in shaping the next generation of cross-border payment ecosystems."

The report noted four central principles to steer this transition. Beyond designing around consumer journeys, the framework calls for making interoperability default across the transaction lifecycle, building an open digital ecosystem with shared infrastructure, and maintaining transparency by default.

Specific measures include developing sector-specific payment journeys, establishing differentiated propositions for emerging digital economy participants, and prioritising customer outcomes alongside payment connectivity and transaction processing.

"India's next phase of cross-border payments should move beyond expanding bilateral payment corridors to designing solutions around the needs of specific customer cohorts. Exporters, MSMEs, gig workers, multinational corporations, travellers and remittance users each face distinct payment, compliance and documentation challenges. Future payments infrastructure, regulatory frameworks and DPI should therefore be designed around customer journeys rather than a one-size-fits-all cross-border payment experience," the report stated.

To implement lifecycle interoperability, the report highlighted the integration of payment systems with regulatory bodies such as customs, GST, DGFT, EDPMS, and IDPMS through standardised APIs, reusable digital data, and lower duplicate reporting requirements.

Shared infrastructure components also entail expanding API-based access to DPI, creating reusable digital identity and KYC frameworks, and maintaining proportionate, risk-based oversight.

Transparency requirements center on standardising fee and foreign exchange margin disclosures, providing end-to-end tracking, and improving settlement predictability.

"While faster cross-border payments are the objective, the larger emphasis is on creating an ecosystem where exporters can get paid faster, digital earners can participate globally with less friction and remittance users receive more value from every transaction," the report added. "By combining interoperable DPI with coordinated regulation, open ecosystem participation and customer-centric innovation, India can build the digital rails needed to support a USD 1 trillion export economy this year, scale towards USD 2 trillion over the next five years and enable a digital economy projected to contribute nearly 20 percent of GDP by 2030."