Singapore businesses gain real-time cross-border payment corridors through Project Nexus, reducing supplier payment costs and improving cash conversion cycles.

Project Nexus, a BIS Innovation Hub initiative, now provides real-time cross-border payment corridors for Singapore businesses, enabling supplier payments to be settled in under 60 seconds—a stark contrast to traditional multi-day settlement that strains cash conversion cycles. For Singapore's trade-driven economy, where cross-border payments keep supply chains and cash flow moving through use cases like paying overseas suppliers and settling B2B invoices, this shift from days to seconds fundamentally alters the working capital equation for businesses of all sizes.

The Challenge of B2B Cross-Border Payments for Singapore SMEs

Cross-border payments are the lifeblood of Singapore's trade ecosystem. As a global trading hub, Singapore businesses routinely source raw materials from regional suppliers, pay manufacturers across Southeast Asia, and settle B2B invoices in multiple currencies. Historically, banks were the default option for these transactions, but the experience was often slower, expensive, and lacked transparency. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular faced friction: multi-day settlement times tied up working capital, while opaque fee structures made cost forecasting unreliable.

The success of domestic instant-payment systems like Singapore's PayNow has driven efforts to link them internationally. Clearing and settlement systems in many countries now operate 24/7, yet cross-border payments remained fragmented across incompatible national infrastructures. For Singapore SMEs, this meant that even as domestic payments became instantaneous, paying a supplier in Indonesia or the Philippines could still take three to five business days to clear, with corresponding bank fees eroding already thin margins.

Project Nexus: A Global Connector for Instant Payments

Project Nexus is a BIS Innovation Hub initiative that standardises connections between domestic instant payment systems (IPS) globally. Rather than each payment system operator building custom connections for every new country, Nexus enables a single integration to the Nexus platform, allowing a fast payments system to reach all other countries on the network. In 2022, a proof-of-concept successfully linked the Eurosystem's TIPS to Malaysia's FPX and Singapore's PayNow, later extended to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.

The scope of Nexus extends beyond person-to-person payments. According to the BIS, Nexus supports the B2B payment use case, allowing micro, small and medium-sized businesses to send payments to suppliers or employees in other countries. The system has been designed with a focus on the needs and user experience of both payers and payees, evaluated against design principles to improve the speed, cost, transparency of and access to cross-border payments.

In March 2025, the vision moved closer to reality. Nexus Global Payments (NGP), a not-for-profit entity, was established in Singapore to manage live implementation. Shortly after, the five central bank partners—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—agreed to establish the Nexus Scheme Organisation (NSO) in Singapore, which will manage the project in its live implementation stages.

Settlement Time (Seconds)Source: Orionmano Industries

Impact on B2B Supplier Settlement Costs and Cash Conversion Cycles

Nexus enables end-to-end settlement of cross-border payments in less than 60 seconds, compressing what traditionally took days into a single minute. This speed has direct implications for supplier settlement costs and cash conversion cycles.

The mechanism is structural. Tokenized central bank money on ledgers can bypass traditional correspondent banking chains, making payments faster, cheaper, and final. By eliminating the correspondent bank layers that add fees and processing delays, Nexus reduces transaction costs for SMEs. Standardisation through ISO 20022 messaging and the Nexus platform reduces errors and delays during processing, further lowering operational costs for businesses sending B2B supplier payments.

The cash conversion cycle benefit is equally significant. Real-time settlement eliminates the float period—the days when funds are in transit and unavailable to either payer or payee. For a Singapore SME paying an Indonesian supplier, the difference is between having cash tied up for three to five days versus settlement in under 60 seconds. This compression of the cash conversion cycle improves working capital efficiency and reduces the need for costly trade credit or overdraft facilities. For micro and small businesses in particular, where cash flow timing can determine solvency, the impact is transformative.

Outlook for Singapore B2B Payment Digitization

Singapore's B2B payment ecosystem is positioned to lead the global shift toward instant cross-border settlement, further compressing cash conversion cycles and reducing friction for SMEs. Several structural factors support this trajectory.

In 2025, Singapore announced a plan to consolidate its national payment schemes—PayNow, FAST, and Inter-bank GIRO—under a single entity. This consolidation improves governance and flexibility for future cross-border growth, creating a unified domestic foundation from which Nexus connections can scale. The BIS and ASEAN-5 central banks have stated their desire for any real-world implementation of Nexus to be global rather than regional, and will continue to engage more widely with central banks and IPS operators across the world. Through a single integration with the Nexus platform, each IPS can connect to all others in the network, dramatically simplifying connectivity and laying the foundation for a truly global instant payment ecosystem.

As more central banks connect to Nexus, the network effects will accelerate. For Singapore SMEs, this means the ability to pay suppliers in more countries in real time, with lower costs and predictable settlement. The establishment of NGP and the NSO in Singapore anchors this capability in the city-state, making it a hub for instant cross-border payment infrastructure. The outlook is consistent: real-time B2B settlement will become the norm, not the exception, and Singapore's businesses—particularly its SMEs—are among the first to benefit.