Do Capital Controls Slow Cross-Border Payments in the Last Mile? Preliminary Evidence

Alisa DiCaprio, Marcello Miccoli, Philip Montalvao, Andrew Usher and Jeanne Verrier

No 2026/068, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Cross-border payments face multiple challenges that may result in slow transaction speed, particularly at the beneficiary leg, which constitutes the last mile of the payment process. This paper measures whether capital controls are associated with slower cross-border payments, using two novel cross-country datasets derived from microeconomic data. While it does not establish causality, preliminary evidence suggests that the effect is statistically significant and sizeable. A one-standard-deviation increase in the Financial Account Restriction Index, our measure of capital controls, is associated with a delay of 4 to 8 hours at the beneficiary leg. The effect is stronger in Emerging and Developing Economies, and heterogeneous across geographic regions.

Keywords: Cross-Border Payments; Capital Flow Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2026-04-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-fdg, nep-mon and nep-pay
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=575261 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2026/068

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().