Eight stages, from an order to money in the account.
A cross-border payment is treated as one event by almost everything written about it. It is not one event. It is eight handovers, each with an owner, a document and a price, and the failures cluster at the joins rather than in the middle of any stage.
This is the running order. Three stages are written; the rest publish on the dates shown.
Who this is for
Anybody who invoices across a border or pays a supplier who does. Exporters, importers, and the finance person who has to answer why a payment marked complete has not arrived.
No background in trade finance is assumed. Terms are defined where they first appear and gathered in the glossary on the home page.
How each stage is written
Mechanism, owner, price, task. Every stage explains what physically happens, names who controls it, prices it against published figures, and ends with something to do using your own paperwork.
Where a figure could not be verified we print the gap instead of an estimate, and say who declined to answer.