The G20’s target of bringing cross-border payment costs to 3% by 2027 will not be met, and with no legal cap on what providers may charge, COLIBRIX ONE argues the contest for merchants is shifting from headline rates to what happens after go-live: round-the-clock access to a named human, a dedicated manager and support across the full breadth of a merchant’s payment needs.
Even Europe’s Cheapest Corridors Sit Well Above 3%
Regulators set a target, under the G20 roadmap tracked by the Financial Stability Board, of bringing the cost of cross-border payments to 3% or below by 2027. On current evidence that target will be missed, and Europe is no exception. Sending money internationally still costs 6.36% of the amount transferred on average, ranging from 5.11% in the cheapest region to 8.46% in the most expensive, according to the World Bank’s Remittance Prices Worldwide.
In the same Q3 2025 data, not one major European sending market comes close to the target:
- Germany — 4.49%;
- the United Kingdom — 4.61%;
- France — 5.23%;
- Italy — 7.44%.
So even the cheapest sits roughly half again above 3%. The FSB has itself conceded that the 2027 goal is unlikely to be met.
With No Cap on Fees, Service Becomes the Battleground
That 3% figure is not a legal ceiling: regulators track and encourage lower cross-border costs but they do not cap what a provider may charge. So pricing stays a competitive variable rather than a fixed rule.
As headline rates converge across the market, the real differentiation moves to everything that happens after a merchant is onboarded: how quickly an exception is resolved, whether a named person is leading the account when problems arise and how much operating complexity the provider absorbs on the merchant’s behalf.
COLIBRIX ONE’s Answer: Personal Support Around the Clock
COLIBRIX ONE has built its model around support that starts after go-live as the core of the relationship rather than an afterthought. Every merchant works with a dedicated manager who is reachable around the clock, so a payment issue in any timezone reaches a named person who already knows the account rather than an anonymous queue.
“Our support is staffed by people, not scripts, and it is built for the cases automated systems handle least well,” says Olya Oleh, Head of Partnership and Business Development at COLIBRIX ONE. “It responds quickly and stays reachable at the weekend, when a stalled payment cannot wait until Monday.”
Behind that support sits the full payment infrastructure, so the help is not limited to answering questions:
- A single multi-currency account holding and routing EUR, GBP, USD, PLN and other major currencies, with conversion in near-real time at competitive rates;
- A dedicated IBAN in the company’s own name, so every payment is tied to the business and attributed automatically, with no manual matching or intermediary-account delays;
- SEPA, including SEPA Instant, and Swift, for both instant euro and international transfers;
- Compliance verification within 48 hours.
As the 2027 deadline nears, the advantage is moving to providers that stay useful long after go-live, turning support that once lived in a queue into a capability every merchant can reach.
