Interoperability depends on more than connecting payment systems. Countries must also trust the identities being verified, the data being exchanged and the institutions carrying responsibility when something fails. Cross-border finance exposes differences in digital identity, KYC, AML/CFT, cybersecurity, privacy and liability frameworks that may be manageable domestically but become serious risks once systems connect. The roundtable focuses on the minimum trust architecture required before two financial ecosystems can interoperate safely. It asks what must be mutually recognised, what data should remain under national control, how users can be verified across jurisdictions and where liability should sit when a cross-border transaction or security control fails.

Many promising financial companies do not fail because the product is weak. They fail between early proof and meaningful scale. Growth capital becomes harder to secure, institutional partners hesitate to integrate with younger firms, and entering each new market can require rebuilding relationships, compliance processes and distribution from scratch. This roundtable focuses on that scale gap. It asks which forms of capital are missing after the early stages, what would make banks and other large institutions more willing to partner with growth-stage providers, and which shared infrastructure or market-access mechanisms could reduce the cost of expanding across emerging markets.