CPMI (Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures)

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) is a standard-setting body housed at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. Originally established in 1990 as the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS), it was renamed in 2014 to reflect its expanding mandate over market infrastructures beyond pure payment systems. Its 28 central bank members include the Federal Reserve, the ECB, the Bank of England, the PBoC, and other major monetary authorities. CPMI does not have binding legislative authority; instead, it shapes global policy through standards, research, and coordination that central banks then implement domestically.

Core Mandate

CPMI’s primary mandate is to promote safety and efficiency in payment, clearing, and settlement systems. Its most important output is the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMIs), developed jointly with IOSCO in 2012, which establish internationally recognised standards for systemically important payment systems, central counterparties (CCPs), and securities settlement systems. The PFMIs are not legally binding, but regulators around the world incorporate them into domestic requirements, making them the de facto global rulebook for infrastructure operators.

Cross-Border Payments Agenda

Since 2020, CPMI has operated under a G20 mandate to address the longstanding problem of cross-border payments: slow speeds, high costs, limited transparency, and restricted access. The G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments — developed with the FSB, IMF, World Bank, and FATF — assigns CPMI specific workstreams covering payment system interlinking, data standards (including the ISO 20022 adoption push), and access policy. Progress reports are delivered annually to the G20. Tokenised settlement infrastructure is increasingly central to this agenda: CPMI research has explored how programmable settlement in tokenised environments could compress the correspondent banking chain that makes cross-border payments expensive.

CPMI-IOSCO Work on Crypto Market Infrastructure

Following the growth of crypto asset markets, CPMI and IOSCO issued a joint consultative report in 2022 examining whether existing PFMIs apply to crypto market infrastructure, including centralised crypto exchanges operating clearinghouse-like functions, and on-chain settlement systems. Their conclusion was that systemically important crypto infrastructure should be held to the same standards as traditional financial market infrastructure — a position that has informed subsequent regulatory approaches in the EU (MiCA), the UK, and Singapore. This work has direct implications for tokenised securities platforms seeking to perform settlement functions: if they reach systemic scale, CPMI-IOSCO standards would apply.

Tokenised Settlement Research

CPMI has published substantive research on the application of distributed ledger technology to payment and settlement systems. Key themes include the potential for atomic settlement (simultaneous exchange of asset and payment, eliminating settlement risk), the role of wholesale CBDCs as settlement assets in tokenised environments, and the design of multi-CBDC platforms for cross-border settlement. This research underpins the BIS Innovation Hub’s broader project portfolio.

Project mBridge

CPMI is a participant in Project mBridge, the multi-CBDC cross-border platform developed by the BIS Innovation Hub together with the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE. mBridge demonstrated that tokenised cross-border settlement between central banks using a shared DLT platform is technically feasible. CPMI’s involvement signals institutional endorsement of the direction, even as geopolitical questions about mBridge’s governance — particularly given China’s leading role — remain unresolved. The project reached Minimum Viable Product stage in 2024.

Defining Safe Infrastructure for Tokenised Assets

CPMI’s most consequential role for tokenisation policy may be its ongoing work to define what “safe” payment and settlement infrastructure looks like when assets are tokenised. This includes questions about finality of settlement on distributed ledgers (when is a blockchain transaction legally final?), the treatment of failed transactions in automated systems, and the application of the PFMIs’ cyber resilience requirements to node-based architectures. Central banks and regulators implementing tokenisation pilots routinely cite CPMI standards as the baseline against which new infrastructure designs are assessed.