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Global Growth or Global Gridlock? Your FMCG Payments Hold the Key (2025)

FMCG payments strategy decides whether your best quarter launches…or stalls. When money lands at the right moment, containers move, displays go up, and partners trust your dates. When it doesn’t, tiny delays snowball into stockouts and deductions. The choice isn’t philosophical; it’s operational—and fixable.

FMCG payments strategy

The world you’re operating in

There’s finally a public scoreboard for cross-border performance: cost, speed, transparency, access. That’s the G20 roadmap, coordinated by the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures. Align your internal KPIs to those four pillars and decisions get easier—because you’re speaking the same language as regulators, banks, and partners. (https://www.bis.org/cpmi/cross_border.htm) Bank for International Settlements

There’s also a hard data cutover. ISO 20022 replaces legacy MT formats for cross-border FI-to-FI payment instructions after 22 November 2025. Rich, structured messages move through screening faster and reconcile cleanly on the other side. (https://www.swift.com/standards/iso-20022/iso-20022-faqs/implementation) Swift

And the rails are catching up. Central banks behind Project Nexus are working toward live interlinking of instant payment systems across India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—so “cross-border” starts to feel domestic. (https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm) Bank for International Settlements

As a reality check, the World Bank still tracks a 6.49% global average for retail remittances. You’re not retail, but the signal is loud: many corridors carry avoidable friction. (https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/) Remittance Prices Worldwide

Where gridlock starts (and how to see it)

Gridlock isn’t one big failure. It’s a lot of small ones.

A supplier field left blank, so screening halts at 4:57 p.m. A Friday release fired after the last cutoff. A USD payment to a distributor who lives in NGN, starting a week of claims. None of these is dramatic. Together, they drain margin and credibility.

Spot the pattern early. If your team spends Monday chasing “where is my money?” threads, you don’t have a market problem—you have a FMCG payments strategy problem.

The first principle: measure what the world measures

Borrow the public scoreboard. Every quarter, show:

Those four lines map exactly to the global programme’s pillars—cost, speed, transparency, access—and keep your story honest. (https://www.bis.org/cpmi/cross_border.htm) Bank for International Settlements

Data makes speed possible: ISO 20022 in practice

Fast rails feel slow with fuzzy facts. ISO 20022 turns “clean data” into a standard: legal names, structured addresses, purpose codes, human-readable remittance info. Enforce it at draft, not after the wire. You’ll watch false positives fall and repairs vanish.

The timing helps. Swift reconfirmed the 22 November 2025 end of CBPR+ coexistence; the sooner you map fields, the faster your approvals move when it counts. (https://www.swift.com/standards/iso-20022/iso-20022-faqs/implementation) Swift

Want external proof the tide is turning? Swift notes more than half of payment instruction messages are already in ISO 20022 as of August 2025. (https://www.swift.com/standards/iso-20022/iso-20022-bytes/iso-20022-bytes-payments-countdown-iso-20022) Swift

Rails rule timing: instant, near-real-time, and cut-offs

Pick rails by what you need the payment to do, not by habit.

If a corridor supports instant or near-real-time, use it for deposits, incentives, and finals that unlock movement—especially on weekends. If it doesn’t, route by cut-off-aware scheduling. Release when the rail can actually clear, not when your inbox is quiet.

Treat this like logistics planning. Money should move when value moves. That’s a FMCG payments strategy you can run every week.

Africa’s unlock: local currencies without the USD detour

Distributors live in local currencies. Paying them in USD exports volatility into your relationship.

The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) is building on-continent settlement plumbing, and in July 2025 it launched the African Currency Marketplace to match African currencies directly and reduce dollar detours. For African lanes, that means fewer hops, more predictability, and cleaner reconciliation—exactly what you want before a promo weekend. (https://papss.com/media/papss-and-interstellar-unveil-african-currency-marketplace-eliminating-5-billion-trade-bottleneck/) PAPSS

A single distributor pilot will tell you more than a hundred emails. Pay locals in locals, hedge centrally, and measure disputes and reorder timing before and after. (Afreximbank/APO release: https://afreximbank.africa-newsroom.com/press/panafrican-payment-and-settlement-system-papss-and-interstellar-unveil-african-currency-marketplace-eliminating-5-billion-trade-bottleneck) Afreximbank

LATAM’s lesson: Pix-level clarity for reconciliation

Brazil’s Pix rewired expectations. People expect now—and confirmations that read like plain language. Even if your first leg is cross-border, treat Pix-native clarity as your benchmark: intelligible references and statuses operations can schedule around.

The Central Bank’s stats page shows the scale, and Reuters has covered the leap into recurring payments (Pix Automático) slated for mid-2025. That’s not just e-commerce news; it’s a blueprint for how your confirmations should look and feel. (https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pixstatistics) (https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazils-pix-set-next-leap-with-launch-recurring-payments-2025-06-04/) Banco Central do BrasilReuters

Southeast Asia’s catalyst: Project Nexus momentum

Project Nexus is the cleanest signal that cross-border won’t feel cross-border for long. Five central banks—India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand—are working toward live implementation, with BIS advising. When those links go live, your exposure window between “rate taken” and “cash credited” shrinks dramatically. (https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm) (https://www.bot.or.th/en/news-and-media/news/news-20240701.html) Bank for International SettlementsBot Thailand

Design the habit now: release when the rail can clear, and push decisions to where they unlock logistics.

FX discipline that serves operations (not the other way around)

FX shouldn’t hijack your calendar. Run it like a portfolio.

Lock a base layer near your budget rate; layer timed windows for the rest. For large notional, capture multiple firm quotes, time-stamped against a transparent mid. Slice in thinner hours. Log decisions. When markets are deep (the BIS tallies $7.5T/day in FX turnover), discipline is rewarded. (https://www.bis.org/statistics/rpfx22.htm) European Central Bank

The game isn’t “win the tick.” It’s “hit the plan.” That’s how FMCG payments strategy earns credibility with your board.

Trust as a KPI: paying partners the way they live

You can’t buy trust after the fact. You earn it by paying on time, in the right currency, with a reference people can read.

Local-currency settlement where feasible. Human-readable narratives (PO • invoice • lane). Status that says more than “processing.” The fastest way to reduce claims and deductions is to stop creating them.

If that sounds soft, watch your reorder cadence after you fix it. It won’t feel soft for long.

Your 90-day plan (from chaos to cadence)

Days 1–30: Tell the truth. Pull 90 days of flows across your top corridors. Compute: all-in cost per $1,000; instruction-to-credit time; repair/reject rate and top causes; auto-match rate; realized FX slippage vs mid. Add one external barometer—the World Bank’s 6.49% global average for retail remittances—to frame the friction you’re designing away. (https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/) Remittance Prices Worldwide

Days 31–60: Fix the pipe. Map ERP fields to ISO 20022 end-to-end and enforce them at draft. Turn on beneficiary pre-validation. Require human-readable references. Implement cut-off-aware routing; pilot one faster rail (Nexus region, where practical) and one Africa lane with a PAPSS-aligned participant. (https://www.swift.com/standards/iso-20022/iso-20022-faqs/implementation) (https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm) (https://papss.com/media/papss-and-interstellar-unveil-african-currency-marketplace-eliminating-5-billion-trade-bottleneck/) SwiftBank for International SettlementsPAPSS

Days 61–90: Prove the delta. Re-run the scoreboard. Convert time saved into dollars: day-slips avoided, repair fees removed, spreads compressed, hours returned to the team. Keep before/after snapshots; they’ll pay for your next corridor expansion.

The 23 high-impact plays

  1. Put FMCG payments strategy KPIs on one page: cost, speed, transparency, access.
  2. Enforce ISO 20022 fields at draft, not after the wire. (https://www.swift.com/standards/iso-20022/iso-20022-faqs/implementation) Swift
  3. Pre-validate beneficiary details before screening.
  4. Require plain-English remittance references (PO • invoice • lane).
  5. Route by cut-offs and rail capacity, not by habit.
  6. Use instant/near-real-time for deposits, incentives, and finals where credible.
  7. Pay distributors in local currency where feasible; hedge centrally.
  8. Pilot one PAPSS-aligned lane in Africa; compare time-to-cash pre/post. (https://papss.com/media/papss-and-interstellar-unveil-african-currency-marketplace-eliminating-5-billion-trade-bottleneck/) PAPSS
  9. Track realized FX slippage weekly by corridor and ticket size.
  10. Capture multi-dealer quotes for size; time-stamp against a transparent mid.
  11. Slice trades in thinner hours; don’t chase illiquid ticks.
  12. Align release windows to logistics milestones—customs, DC receipt, shelf.
  13. Stream live status to ops; stop asking “where’s my money?”
  14. Auto-match reconciliation; escalate exceptions with evidence attached.
  15. Treat weekends as productive where rails allow.
  16. Borrow Pix’s clarity for your confirmations, even outside Brazil. (https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pixstatistics) Banco Central do Brasil
  17. Keep a secondary route for resiliency in fragile corridors.
  18. Publish corridor scorecards; retire averages that hide problems.
  19. Train approvers on cut-offs; reduce “Friday roulette.”
  20. Tie approver SLAs to promo calendars.
  21. Make audits boring: immutable logs of quotes, decisions, releases.
  22. Keep one external reality check in your deck—the World Bank RPW average—until your lanes clearly beat it. (https://remittanceprices.worldbank.org/) Remittance Prices Worldwide
  23. Plan for the near future: Nexus links, ISO cutoff, and PAPSS coverage expansion. (https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/fmis/nexus.htm) (https://www.swift.com/standards/iso-20022/iso-20022-bytes/iso-20022-bytes-payments-countdown-iso-20022) Bank for International SettlementsSwift

What “good” looks like on your dashboard

A healthy FMCG payments strategy reads like this:

That’s growth you can defend—in the boardroom and with your partners.

Make it real with FMCG Pay

A modern FMCG payments strategy needs one operating motion—not a patchwork of tools.

FMCG Pay ties ISO-clean data, automated screening, corridor-aware routing, instant-rail options, portfolio-style FX execution, and live status into a single control tower. Treasury sees spreads and guardrails. AP releases with confidence. Ops gets ETAs they can plan around.

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