Cross-border connectivity becomes real only when it solves a specific economic problem. Workers need cheaper remittances. Travellers need payments that work across borders. Small businesses need trade settlement that does not depend on multiple intermediaries. Connecting Southeast Asia and African markets therefore starts not with technology, but with choosing the first flow worth connecting. Cambodia's expanding cross-border payment relationships offer one starting point for that discussion. The panel examines which use case should come first, which existing systems can be connected rather than rebuilt, and who should absorb the cost and risk of creating the first viable corridor before transaction volumes are large enough to sustain it.

Shared payment infrastructure creates value precisely because competitors use the same network, but that makes ownership and funding contentious. Banks may resist paying for infrastructure used by newer competitors. Fintechs may resist access terms controlled by incumbents. Governments may finance the network and still face pressure over unequal access or rising operating costs. Different markets have taken different approaches, including central-bank ownership, industry-owned switches and open-source infrastructure. The roundtable compares these models through three questions: who owns the rail, who gets access and on what terms, and who pays to maintain and upgrade it. It then examines how those choices change once infrastructure crosses borders and sovereignty becomes shared rather than purely national.

Bilateral payment links can prove that cross-border interoperability works, but each new connection also adds another set of agreements, standards and supervisory relationships to maintain. At some point, adding country pairs one by one becomes less efficient than building a common network. Regional and multilateral initiatives are testing that alternative through shared platforms and settlement layers. The roundtable examines when bilateral connectivity should give way to multilateral architecture, how such systems should be governed and what individual countries must retain control over when infrastructure becomes shared. It closes by identifying the smallest credible cross-regional network that could demonstrate the model in practice.