IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2026-068.html

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

Author

Listed:
  • Alisa DiCaprio
  • Mr. Marcello Miccoli
  • Philip Montalvao
  • Andrew Usher
  • Jeanne Verrier

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Alisa DiCaprio & Mr. Marcello Miccoli & Philip Montalvao & Andrew Usher & Jeanne Verrier, 2026. "Do Capital Controls Slow Cross-Border Payments in the Last Mile? Preliminary Evidence," IMF Working Papers 2026/068, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2026/068
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=575261
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2026/068. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.