Asia-Pacific Pushes Real-Time Payments Across Borders

Asia-Pacific’s real-time payments market is shifting from domestic speed to cross-border interoperability. Bilateral links can move money quickly, but each corridor requires separate technical, commercial and regulatory work, limiting scale. The BIS Innovation Hub launched Project Nexus in 2022 to give domestic instant payment systems a standard, single connection to a wider network. The model is designed to deliver most cross-border transfers within 60 seconds while reducing the delays and costs associated with correspondent banking chains.

Project Nexus published its comprehensive governance, commercial and technology blueprint on July 1, 2024. In 2025, the central banks of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand incorporated Nexus Global Payments to move the network toward live implementation, after which the BIS handed over the project. Separately, India and Ant International are reportedly discussing a link between UPI and Alipay+. Ant International says the platform spans more than 100 markets, 1.8 billion accounts and over 150 million merchants; no launch date has been announced.