International companies depend on reliable payments to maintain supply chains, manage liquidity and preserve commercial relationships. Yet a new study by LexisNexis Risk Solutions reveals substantial weaknesses in the processing of international transactions, with incorrect beneficiary information and incomplete banking details among the leading causes of failure. While the research focuses on financial institutions, its findings carry significant implications for multinational businesses. With new ISO 20022 requirements taking effect in November 2026, payment-data quality is becoming a critical issue for corporate treasury, financial security and operational resilience.

An international payment may appear to be a routine administrative transaction. An invoice is approved, the transfer is authorised and the amount is debited from the company’s account. Yet between the originating bank and the intended beneficiary, a transaction can encounter numerous obstacles. Incorrect account details, incomplete beneficiary information, intermediary banking requirements or regulatory checks may interrupt the process, leaving the recipient waiting for funds that the sender believes have already been dispatched.

For internationally operating companies, such failures represent considerably more than an inconvenience in financial administration. A delayed supplier payment can affect production schedules, interrupt the release of goods, undermine contractual arrangements or place additional pressure on working capital. Where businesses depend on tightly coordinated international supply chains, even a short disruption may have consequences extending well beyond the original transaction.

A new study entitled The True Impact of Failed Payments 2026, published by LexisNexis Risk Solutions and conducted with Datos Insights, highlights the scale of the problem. Based on a survey of 150 senior payments executives at financial institutions across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, the research finds that only two per cent of institutions achieve a straight-through-processing rate approaching 100 per cent for cross-border payments. Just nine per cent report rates above 95 per cent, while approximately one in ten international payments fails on its first attempt.

Although these figures describe the performance of financial institutions rather than the payment operations of individual companies, they expose vulnerabilities that can directly affect corporate customers. Many payment failures originate in the information supplied before a transaction reaches the banking system, making the quality of internal payment processes an increasingly important part of international business risk management.

The Financial Consequences Extend Beyond Banking

According to the LexisNexis study, three-quarters of surveyed financial institutions report losing up to five million US dollars annually in customer revenue because of failed payments. More than a third incur costs exceeding 20 dollars for each failed or delayed transaction, while the fees typically recovered amount to only 11 to 15 dollars.

The cumulative impact becomes apparent when transaction volumes are considered. At a financial institution processing 10,000 cross-border payments daily, a straight-through-processing rate of 95 per cent would still leave 500 transactions requiring some form of intervention. Assuming an average processing cost of 12.10 dollars for each exception, this would represent approximately 6,050 dollars per day. Annualised over 365 days, the amount reaches around 2.2 million dollars. If only 250 operating days were considered, the corresponding total would be approximately 1.5 million dollars.

These calculations illustrate the operational costs faced by banks and should not be interpreted as a direct estimate of the losses experienced by their corporate customers. Moreover, a payment requiring manual intervention is not necessarily a payment that ultimately fails. Some exceptions reflect legitimate compliance procedures or other necessary controls.

For companies, the financial consequences must be assessed differently. Bank charges and administrative expenses are only the visible portion of the problem. When a payment is delayed, liquidity forecasts may become unreliable, suppliers may suspend deliveries and contractual penalties may arise. A transaction involving foreign exchange can create additional complications if funds are returned and must subsequently be transferred again, particularly where conversion rates have changed.

The consequences can be particularly serious for manufacturers, logistics companies, importers and businesses operating centralised payment functions across multiple subsidiaries. In these organisations, an isolated payment problem may affect procurement, inventory management and production planning simultaneously. The economic damage is therefore not necessarily proportional to the amount transferred or the cost of correcting the banking information.

This is why payment reliability should increasingly be understood as a component of financial resilience rather than a narrow measure of administrative efficiency. The relevant question for management is not simply whether a transfer was submitted successfully, but whether the obligation was settled within the required timeframe and whether the recipient could reliably identify and reconcile the payment.

Why International Payments Remain Vulnerable

The LexisNexis findings suggest that many payment failures are caused by relatively basic deficiencies in transaction data. Incorrect beneficiary information accounts for 21 per cent of reported failures, while problems involving account numbers and inaccurate bank details each account for approximately 15 per cent.

These weaknesses are particularly relevant to multinational organisations, where information frequently passes through several systems before a payment is executed. Supplier records may be maintained in an enterprise resource planning system, transferred to a treasury platform and subsequently converted into a format accepted by a banking partner. Each stage introduces the possibility of incomplete information, outdated records or incorrect data mapping.

The complexity increases when transactions cross national payment systems. Different countries apply different account-number structures, clearing identifiers, address requirements and reporting obligations. Payments may also pass through correspondent banks, particularly when the originating and receiving institutions do not maintain a direct relationship or when the transfer involves less commonly traded currencies.

Regional differences remain significant. According to the LexisNexis research, 92 per cent of the European financial institutions included in its regional comparison report that fewer than five per cent of payments fail or are delayed. The equivalent figures are 77 per cent in Asia-Pacific and 69 per cent in North America. These percentages indicate the proportion of institutions meeting that performance threshold, not the overall failure rate of payments within each region.

For internationally active businesses, the practical implication is that payment reliability cannot be assessed solely through the performance of a global banking partner. Local payment infrastructure, country-specific requirements and the number of intermediaries involved can materially influence processing outcomes. A procedure that works reliably for transfers within Europe may require additional controls when payments are directed to markets with different settlement arrangements or less standardised banking systems.

International efforts to address these weaknesses are already under way. The Financial Stability Board has repeatedly identified inconsistent data standards, fragmented payment infrastructures and regulatory differences as obstacles to faster and more reliable cross-border transactions. Improving international payments is therefore not simply a matter of introducing faster technology. It requires greater compatibility between systems and a more consistent exchange of accurate financial information.

For companies, that compatibility begins with their own data. The legal name of a beneficiary, the account identifier, bank details, country-specific information and relevant payment references must be accurate before the transfer is initiated. Where these elements are maintained manually or updated inconsistently, even sophisticated banking systems cannot reliably compensate for errors originating within the corporate organisation.

ISO 20022: A Regulatory Deadline with Operational Consequences

The international transition to ISO 20022 is intended to improve the structure, consistency and transparency of financial messages. By enabling more detailed and standardised transaction information, the framework creates opportunities for greater automation, more effective compliance screening and improved payment reconciliation.

The transition has already reached an important milestone. On 22 November 2025, Swift ended the coexistence period between legacy MT messages and ISO 20022 for the relevant cross-border payment instructions. A further change will take effect on 14 November 2026, when fully unstructured postal addresses will no longer be supported in applicable Swift CBPR+ payment messages.

Under the new requirements, postal address information must be supplied in a fully structured or hybrid format. At a minimum, the town and country must be included in designated fields for the parties and agents covered by the rules, subject to specified exceptions. Banks identified solely by their Business Identifier Code, or BIC, can continue to be identified without separate postal address information.

Non-compliant payment messages may be rejected during validation or receive a negative acknowledgement at network level. Unlike certain technical processing problems, missing address information cannot simply be corrected centrally by Swift. The necessary data must be obtained and supplied before the transaction enters the network.

For multinational companies, this creates a direct operational obligation even where they do not communicate with Swift themselves. Businesses submitting payments through ERP systems, treasury platforms or proprietary banking channels remain dependent on providing their banks with the information required for compliant processing.

Swift explicitly advises corporate customers to obtain beneficiary address information, store it within their ERP or treasury applications and transmit the required elements when initiating a payment. The organisation also warns that differences in readiness between international and domestic payment infrastructures may create additional interoperability challenges.

The implications should not be underestimated. An international company may operate several ERP systems, maintain supplier records across different subsidiaries and rely on multiple banks for payments in different currencies. Ensuring that beneficiary data are properly structured throughout this environment requires coordination between finance, procurement, IT and banking partners.

The approaching deadline therefore presents more than a technical formatting exercise. It is a test of whether companies understand how their payment information moves through internal and external systems, and whether essential data remain complete and accurate throughout the process.

Payment Security Requires More Than Automation

Improving straight-through processing is an important objective, but automation alone does not guarantee secure payments. Indeed, a payment instruction containing fraudulent banking details may pass technical validation if the account information is formally correct.

This distinction is particularly important in cases involving business email compromise and fraudulent changes to supplier bank accounts. An attacker who gains access to a legitimate correspondence channel, or successfully impersonates a trusted business partner, may persuade employees to redirect a payment to an account under criminal control. The resulting transaction may be technically valid while being commercially and legally unauthorised.

Companies should therefore distinguish between verifying the technical accuracy of account details and verifying that those details genuinely belong to the intended business partner. Changes to beneficiary information should be subject to documented approval procedures and, particularly for material payments, independent confirmation through established contact channels.

The growing use of beneficiary-verification services offers additional protection. Within the euro area, payment service providers have been required to offer Verification of Payee since 9 October 2025 under the European Union’s Instant Payments Regulation. The service checks whether the beneficiary name supplied by the payer corresponds to the relevant account identifier and alerts the payer to discrepancies.

For internationally operating companies, however, the effectiveness and availability of such checks differ across jurisdictions and payment systems. A name-and-account verification result cannot replace internal authorisation procedures, nor does it conclusively establish that a requested change originated from the legitimate supplier.

The European Central Bank has also identified operational challenges in integrating beneficiary verification into high-volume corporate payments. Where a batch contains numerous supplier transfers, a single discrepancy may require manual intervention or disrupt processing if the underlying systems cannot separate problematic instructions from correctly validated payments.

Effective control therefore requires an appropriate balance. Routine transactions supported by reliable data should proceed with minimal intervention, while unusual account changes, suspected fraud and relevant sanctions alerts must trigger additional scrutiny. Seeking higher automation rates by suppressing legitimate risk warnings would defeat the purpose of strengthening payment security.

The same principle applies to sanctions screening and anti-money-laundering controls. International payments may require checks involving beneficiaries, intermediary banks or jurisdictions subject to particular restrictions. Such reviews can delay transactions, but they are not necessarily failures of the payment system. The objective should be to distinguish avoidable data problems from necessary regulatory intervention and to resolve both through transparent, controlled processes.

From Payment Processing to Corporate Resilience

For internationally active companies, the most effective response begins before a transfer is authorised. Supplier and beneficiary records should be maintained as controlled business information, with regular validation of bank details, account identifiers and required postal information. Where systems support it, automated checks can identify incorrect or incomplete data when a supplier is first registered or when payment information is amended, rather than waiting until an urgent invoice becomes due.

Responsibility should not rest with the treasury department alone. Procurement teams are often the first to receive supplier information, while accounts payable processes the underlying obligations and IT maintains the interfaces that carry payment data. Compliance teams provide essential oversight of fraud risks and regulatory restrictions. If these functions operate independently, errors may remain undetected until a payment is rejected or a supplier complains.

A more integrated approach would establish clear ownership of payment-data quality across the organisation. Companies should also measure the performance of their payment processes, including the proportion of transactions completed successfully on the first attempt, the frequency of manual corrections, the time required to resolve exceptions and the number of payment-related supplier disputes. Such measurements are particularly valuable when analysed by bank, currency and destination market, because global averages can conceal persistent problems in specific payment corridors.

Technology can support these efforts through account and routing validation, automated sanctions screening, payment orchestration and more comprehensive transaction tracking. Solutions such as Swift Payment Pre-validation and commercial bank-data validation services illustrate the capabilities available, although their coverage and suitability must be assessed against the company’s actual payment routes. Larger organisations may also benefit from centralised payment platforms capable of applying consistent controls across multiple subsidiaries and banking relationships.

Investment decisions nevertheless require a realistic assessment of costs and benefits. The operational savings identified in the LexisNexis study relate to financial institutions and cannot simply be transferred to the business case of an industrial or commercial enterprise. Companies must calculate their own costs of manual intervention, delayed settlement, banking charges and supplier disruption, while accounting for implementation expenses and the additional work generated by legitimate risk controls.

A useful measure of success is therefore not the pursuit of a theoretical 100 per cent automation rate. It is the reduction of preventable failures without weakening controls that protect the organisation against fraud, regulatory breaches and unauthorised payments.

There is also a broader question of business continuity. Companies should know how critical international obligations can be settled when a payment channel is unavailable, a transaction is held for investigation or a banking partner experiences an operational disruption. Depending on the jurisdiction and the nature of the transaction, alternative banking arrangements, clear escalation procedures and reliable payment-status information may help preserve essential commercial activities.

The growing importance of such measures is reflected in the European Central Bank’s payments strategy published in March 2026, which identifies standardisation, greater payment transparency, more efficient reconciliation and improved cash-flow forecasting as priorities for business-to-business payments.

Ultimately, international payment reliability depends on more than the performance of financial institutions. It is shaped by the quality of information, the effectiveness of internal controls, the compatibility of technical systems and the ability of businesses to recognise problems before they affect commercial operations.

The LexisNexis study makes the costs of payment friction visible. The approaching ISO 20022 deadline makes the consequences of poor data quality more immediate. For globally operating companies, the central lesson is clear: a secure international payment does not begin when money leaves the bank account. It begins with the accuracy of the underlying information, the integrity of the approval process and the ability to trace and confirm that the intended recipient has received the funds.

Editorial sources: LexisNexis Risk Solutions, The True Impact of Failed Payments 2026, press release published 7 October 2026; Swift, ISO 20022: The Removal of Unstructured Address, guidance for the November 2026 deadline; European Central Bank, The Eurosystem’s Comprehensive Payments Strategy, March 2026, and Instant Payments Regulation; European Payments Council, Verification of Payee Scheme; Financial Stability Board, Cross-Border Payments: Towards the Next Chapter, July 2026. Research status: 14 October 2026.