Project Nexus will connect Singapore's instant payment system to four other ASEAN countries, reducing settlement times from days to seconds and cutting remittance costs.

Singapore's PayNow, already linked bilaterally to Thailand and India, will gain instant connectivity to Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines via Project Nexus, collapsing settlement times to under a minute. By 2026, PayNow users will be able to transfer funds to four additional ASEAN markets in 60 seconds or less, a drastic reduction from the days currently required for traditional cross-border payments. This multilateral integration replaces a patchwork of bilateral agreements with a single technical and governance framework managed from Singapore, positioning the city-state as a central node in the emerging global instant payment network.

From Bilateral Links to Multilateral Nexus

PayNow’s cross-border journey began in April 2021, when Singapore and Thailand linked their instant payment systems—PayNow and PromptPay—in a world first. For the first time, customers of participating banks in both countries could send money using only a recipient's mobile phone number, eliminating the need for bank account numbers and intermediary bank fees (Source 3). This bilateral connection was followed in February 2023 by a similar link between Singapore and India (Source 3). By November 2023, Singapore and Malaysia added a person-to-person payment linkage (Source 2).

These bilateral arrangements demonstrated the technical feasibility of instant cross-border payments but required each country pair to build and maintain a custom connection. Scaling this approach across multiple jurisdictions becomes exponentially more complex. Project Nexus, developed by the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Centre and the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, solves this by replacing bilateral links with a single multilateral gateway. Rather than building separate connections for every new country, an operator connects once to Nexus and immediately reaches all other countries on the network (Source 5).

Number of countries (count)Source: Orionmano Industries

How Project Nexus Works

Project Nexus standardises the way instant payment systems connect. Rather than a payment system operator building custom connections for every new country, the operator makes a single connection to the Nexus platform. This single connection allows a fast payments system to reach all other countries on the network (Source 5).

The technical architecture relies on a common set of application programming interfaces (APIs) and ISO 20022 messages to exchange payment instructions and other related information between IPS operators via the Nexus technology (Source 4). ISO 20022, a global standard for financial messaging, ensures that payment data—including remittance information, beneficiary identity, and transaction amounts—remains consistent across different domestic systems. Nexus functions as a "behind-the-scenes" service used by IPS operators and their member payment service providers to route instant cross-border payments (Source 4).

The result is a system where payments processed via Nexus reach their destination in 60 seconds or less (Sources 2, 4, 6). This speed applies in most cases, according to the BIS Innovation Hub, and represents a fundamental shift from correspondent banking models where settlement can take one to five business days (Source 2). The initial focus will be on person-to-person transfers and SME payments—segments particularly sensitive to fees and delays (Source 6).

Impact on Settlement Times and Costs

The core benefit of Project Nexus is a dramatic reduction in settlement time and cost compared to traditional cross-border payments. Nexus brings cross-border payments from days to under 60 seconds (Sources 1, 2). This compression is enabled by the direct connection of domestic instant payment systems, which eliminates the chain of correspondent banks that typically processes each transaction and adds fees at every step.

The economic impact is significant. Project Nexus directly supports the G20 target to reduce the global average remittance cost from around 6% to below 3% (Source 6). For a worker sending SGD 1,000 home monthly, this reduction means saving approximately SGD 30 per transaction—a meaningful improvement for low-income migrant workers who form a substantial portion of Singapore's workforce. The initiative also aims for 75% of cross-border transactions to be completed within one hour (Source 6), a benchmark that would transform expectations for business-to-business payments, supply chain finance, and e-commerce settlement across the region.

Cost reduction is achieved through standardisation. By eliminating the need for multiple bilateral connections and reducing the number of intermediaries, Nexus cuts both direct transaction fees and hidden costs from foreign exchange margins. The single multilateral gateway also reduces operational complexity for banks and payment service providers, lowering the overhead that is ultimately passed on to end users.

Timeline and Governance

The path to live implementation has followed a structured development process. A technical proof of concept linking test versions of the Eurosystem's TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS), Malaysia's Real-time Retail Payments Platform (RPP), and Singapore's Fast and Secure Transfers (FAST) was completed in 2022 (Sources 5, 6). This proof of concept validated that the Nexus model could work across different IPS architectures and regulatory environments.

Building on this success, the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Centre worked with the central banks and IPS operators of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to evaluate the model against the reality of their individual systems. This work culminated in a comprehensive scheme, governance framework, commercial model, and technology blueprint released in July 2024 (Sources 2, 6). The blueprint provides the operational and technical specifications that implementing central banks and IPS operators will follow.

Project Nexus is set to go live in 2026, managed by the newly established Nexus Scheme Organisation (NSO) based in Singapore (Source 5). The NSO will oversee the live implementation stages, ensuring consistent governance, compliance, and operational standards across participating countries. Singapore's role as host reflects both its existing bilateral connections and its position as a regional financial hub with established regulatory infrastructure.

Outlook

As Nexus expands beyond the initial five ASEAN members and incorporates additional countries and payment types, PayNow is positioned to become a key node in a global network of instant cross-border payments. The BIS Innovation Hub has already consulted with central banks, standard-setting bodies, IPS operators, and commercial banks from around the world to validate that Nexus is scalable and interoperable with systems beyond the initial ASEAN-5 (Source 5). This groundwork suggests that additional jurisdictions could connect in subsequent phases, further compressing settlement times and costs for businesses and individuals across the network.