The global wholesale foreign exchange (FX) regime constitutes the world’s largest financial market. The key to its continuing growth and success lies in its ability to adapt to change while ensuring effective settlement risk mitigation and efficient liquidity optimisation arrangements like netting that are crucial to the smooth turnover of US$9.5tn daily. This paper explores several of the current transformative trends taking hold in the FX market, such as emerging technologies and new business needs. This paper also examines their potential impact and some of the challenges they face, with a particular focus on liquidity optimisation.

Published in the Journal of Payments Strategy & Systems, Volume 20 Number 1, April 2026.