Cross-border payments fail in different ways depending on the use case. QR payments may work domestically but stop at the border. Remittances can remain expensive even where digital channels are widely available. Trade settlement can still pass through third-country currencies and correspondent banks despite growing commercial links between emerging markets. The roundtable breaks the corridor problem into these separate channels and identifies what prevents each one from working today. It examines standards for extending QR interoperability, where remittance costs can realistically be removed, and what conditions are required for local-currency trade settlement.

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.