Nium's platform now connects 100+ real-time corridors and 40+ licenses, as Project Nexus enables 60-second cross-border settlements for the first time.

Nium has established itself as a leading cross-border payment provider for B2B transactions, benefiting from Project Nexus's real-time corridors that slash supplier settlement costs. The company's platform now supports payouts in over 100 currencies to more than 190 countries, with over 100 corridors capable of real-time settlement, creating infrastructure that directly addresses the inefficiencies that have long plagued B2B cross-border payments.

Nium's Global Platform Scale

Nium's platform reach is among the most extensive in the cross-border payments sector. The company supports payouts in more than 100 currencies to over 190 countries, with 100 corridors capable of real-time settlement (source 5, source 7). This global footprint is underpinned by regulatory licenses and authorizations in more than 40 jurisdictions—a key differentiator in a heavily regulated industry where compliance infrastructure represents a significant barrier to entry (source 7). Nium also collects settlement funds locally in over 25 markets via multi-currency wallets, enabling the "collect, convert, and disburse" model that allows marketplaces to split funds across fee commission and seller wallets seamlessly (source 2).

Count (Number)Source: Orionmano Industries

The platform's architecture is designed for scalability. Enterprises and financial institutions access Nium's payment rails through a secure, modular API suite, which provides fully compliant access across multiple jurisdictions. This structure allows the platform to serve banks, fintechs, and enterprise clients with tailored solutions for payroll, marketplace payouts, vendor payments, and the creator economy (source 5). Nium's regulatory coverage—including licenses in over 15+ jurisdictions as of its June 2024 platform expansion—positions it to manage compliance across markets that often have conflicting or overlapping regulatory frameworks (source 2).

Project Nexus: The Real-Time Catalyst

Project Nexus, an initiative developed by the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) Singapore Centre in collaboration with the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, is fundamentally changing the speed profile of cross-border payments. The project standardises the way that instant payment systems (IPS) connect to each other. Rather than each payment system operator building custom connections for every new country, a single connection to the Nexus platform allows a fast payments system to reach all other countries on the network (source 3).

The operational impact is significant: Nexus enables cross-border payments from sender to recipient within 60 seconds for most transactions. In over 70 countries today, domestic payments already reach their destination in seconds at near-zero cost; Nexus extends this capability across borders (source 3). Following a successful proof-of-concept between the Eurosystem, Malaysia, and Singapore in 2022, the project team validated that the model is scalable and interoperable with IPS beyond the initial five ASEAN countries. A managing entity, the Nexus Scheme Organisation (NSO), has been established in Singapore to manage live implementation (source 3).

For Nium, which already has real-time payment corridors in over 100 routes, Project Nexus provides a standardised on-ramp to additional markets without requiring bilateral agreements with each new country's IPS operator. As Nexus has the potential to link over 70 domestic IPS globally, Nium's pre-integrated platform can extend its real-time settlement capability to virtually all connected markets (source 3).

Cost and Efficiency Implications for B2B Suppliers

The speed improvement from Project Nexus directly addresses a structural problem in B2B supplier payments. Traditional methods such as wire transfers frequently take a relatively long time to clear—up to multiple weeks in the worst cases—and are particularly prone to expensive conversion fees (source 4). For suppliers in emerging markets, these delays can create cash flow strain and increase working capital requirements.

Nium's real-time payments infrastructure reduces these delays, strengthening supplier relationships and platform loyalty. When a marketplace can pay its cross-border sellers within 60 seconds instead of waiting days or weeks for wire transfers to clear, it creates a competitive advantage in seller acquisition and retention (source 2, source 5). Nium's platform also offers transparent foreign exchange (FX) rates, allowing businesses to lock and hold rates for longer periods to manage currency risk and control transaction costs—a critical capability when B2B transactions involve high-value payments across volatile currency pairs (source 2).

The integration efficiency also matters. Modern businesses operate a varied portfolio of software, and payments software must smoothly integrate into each company's digital ecosystem. Nium's API suite enables these checks to proceed much more efficiently, minimising the time wasted on manual reconciliation and compliance verification (source 4).

Market Opportunity and Nium's Competitive Position

The addressable market for cross-border payments is substantial and growing. Thirty-three percent of the $8.8 trillion global ecommerce market is predicted to be cross-border by 2028, representing a $2.9 trillion opportunity (source 2). Nium expanded its platform in June 2024 specifically to serve global marketplaces, enabling real-time payouts to cross-border sellers with a suite of features that include collect/convert/disburse capabilities, simple FX management, and global licensing for comprehensive coverage and regulatory compliance (source 2).

Nium's competitive position rests on three structural advantages. First, its regulatory footprint of 40+ licenses creates a compliance moat that new entrants would require years and significant capital to replicate. Second, its pre-integration with Project Nexus's real-time corridors provides immediate access to the growing network of IPS-connected markets without requiring bilateral negotiations. Third, the platform's "collect, convert, and disburse" model—collecting settlement funds locally in 25+ markets via multi-currency wallets—reduces the number of cross-border transactions and associated costs for marketplaces (source 2).

As Project Nexus expands beyond its initial ASEAN membership, Nium's platform is positioned to capture a growing share of the cross-border ecommerce market without requiring additional integration work. The Nexus Scheme Organisation's establishment in Singapore provides a governance structure for adding new countries, and Nexus's potential to link over 70 domestic IPS globally means that Nium's 100+ real-time corridors could expand significantly without proportional increases in infrastructure costs (source 3). For B2B suppliers, the result is a payments infrastructure that delivers the speed of domestic instant payments with the reach of a global network—a combination that the traditional wire transfer system has never achieved.