Smart Contracts, Smarter Payments: Innovating Cross Border Payments and Reporting Transactions

Abstract: The global financial landscape is experiencing significant transformation driven by technological advancements and evolving market dynamics. Moreover, blockchain technology has become a pivotal platform with widespread applications, especially in finance. Cross-border payments have emerged as a key area of interest, with blockchain offering inherent benefits such as enhanced security, transparency, and efficiency compared to traditional banking systems. This paper presents a novel framework leveraging blockchain technology and smart contracts to emulate cross-border payments, ensuring interoperability and compliance with international standards such as ISO20022. Key contributions of this paper include a novel prototype framework for implementing smart contracts and web clients for streamlined transactions and a mechanism to translate ISO20022 standard messages. Our framework can provide a practical solution for secure, efficient, and transparent cross-border transactions, contributing to the ongoing evolution of global finance and the emerging landscape of decentralized finance.