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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has joined forces with four ASEAN countries—Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand—to create a multilateral platform for instantaneous cross-border retail payments. The initiative, called Project Nexus, aims to interlink domestic Fast Payment Systems (FPSs), including India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), to facilitate faster, cost-effective, and efficient cross-border transactions.
The agreement was signed on June 30, 2024, in Basel, Switzerland, by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of the founding countries. Indonesia, a participant in the early stages, will continue as a special observer.
Currently, India has been linking its FPS with other countries through bilateral arrangements for person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) payments. The multilateral Nexus platform is expected to further expand the international reach of Indian payment systems and go live by 2026.
The platform is also designed to accommodate additional countries in the future, promising to make cross-border retail payments seamless and faster across the region.
[RBI]