The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) is an international committee of central banks that promotes the safety and efficiency of payment, clearing, settlement and related arrangements. It sets global standards for financial market infrastructures, monitors and analyzes developments in payments, and serves as a forum for cooperation among central banks on oversight and policy. The CPMI is hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, which provides its secretariat.
Like the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), the CPMI has no legal powers of its own. Its standards take effect when national authorities adopt them, but because its members include the world's major central banks, its work shapes how payment systems are designed and supervised around the world.
History
Central bank cooperation on payment systems at the BIS dates to a group of experts on payment systems formed in 1980. In 1990 the Governors of the Group of Ten central banks established the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS). That year also saw the Lamfalussy Report, which set minimum standards for cross-border and multi-currency netting schemes. The CPSS was renamed the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures in September 2014, reflecting its broader remit over clearing and settlement infrastructure as well as payments. Its membership has widened beyond the G10 to include central banks from major emerging economies.
Governance
The CPMI is made up of senior officials from member central banks and reports to the Governors of the BIS through the Global Economy Meeting. It is led by a chair drawn from a member central bank and supported by a secretariat at the BIS. It carries out much of its work through working groups and, on topics that cross into securities regulation, jointly with the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO). For its institutional profile, see the CPMI regulator profile; for the host organization, see the BIS industry body profile.
Standards and work of the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures
The committee's most influential output is the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI), published with IOSCO in April 2012. The PFMI apply to systemically important payment systems, central counterparties, central securities depositories, securities settlement systems and trade repositories. They cover legal basis, governance, credit and liquidity risk, settlement, operational risk and access, and include principles that settlement should be final and should use central bank money where practical. The PFMI replaced earlier standards, including the Core Principles for Systemically Important Payment Systems of 2001.
Other areas of work include:
- Settlement risk — analysis of foreign exchange settlement risk and support for payment versus payment (PvP) arrangements such as CLS.
- System design — reports on RTGS, deferred net settlement, fast payments and payment finality.
- Correspondent banking — a 2016 report on the decline in correspondent banking relationships and measures such as better data and use of the LEI.
- Cross-border payments — technical work for the G20 program, launched in 2020 with the Financial Stability Board, to make cross-border payments cheaper, faster, more transparent and more accessible.
- Digital money — studies of central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and tokenization, including guidance on how the PFMI apply to stablecoin arrangements.
- Statistics — the CPMI's statistics on payments and financial market infrastructures, historically known as the Red Book.
Relationship with other bodies
The CPMI is one of several committees hosted at the BIS, alongside the BCBS and the Committee on the Global Financial System. It works with the Financial Stability Board on financial stability priorities, with IOSCO on market infrastructure, and, where payment transparency touches financial crime, with the FATF, for example on the information carried in payment messages.