Sending money across a Southeast Asian border has long been slower and dearer than sending it across the world’s major financial centres. A regional project now moving from design into deployment is meant to fix that, and it does so with an architectural choice worth understanding.

Hub and spoke, not a web of bilaterals

Central banks in the region have spent several years linking their instant payment systems to one another one pair at a time: PayNow to PromptPay, PromptPay to DuitNow, and so on. That approach works but scales badly: connecting ten systems bilaterally requires forty-five separate links, each with its own technical and legal negotiation.

Project Nexus, developed through the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub with regional central banks, replaces that with a hub-and-spoke model. Each domestic instant payment system connects once to a common gateway and thereby reaches every other participant. Nexus Global Payments has been established in Singapore to operate the scheme, with India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand among the first movers and Indonesia also in the founding group.

What users will see

Very little, which is the point. Nexus is designed to sit behind existing bank applications rather than requiring a separate download, with payments targeted to settle in sixty seconds or less. The consumer experience is intended to resemble a domestic transfer.

Behind that simplicity sits a growing lattice of linked QR schemes (Cambodia’s KHQR, Indonesia’s QRIS, Lao QR, Malaysia’s DuitNow, the Philippines’ QR Ph, Singapore’s PayNow, Thailand’s PromptPay and Vietnam’s VietQR) which have already normalised cross-border retail payment for travellers and small merchants.

The professional implications

Treasury teams feel it first. Faster settlement compresses the float that regional businesses carry to cover payment lags, which changes cash forecasting assumptions and weakens the case for holding local buffers in every market.

Compliance feels it hardest. Instant settlement leaves no window for post-hoc review, so sanctions and AML screening have to happen before release, at scale, in seconds. Institutions joining the scheme are committing to real-time screening capability, and anyone reading the scheme rules should look carefully at how liability is allocated when screening fails somewhere along a multilateral chain.

Then there is pricing. Retail remittance corridors in the region have long carried opaque foreign exchange margins. A common gateway makes comparison easier, which should compress spreads and squeeze the incumbent operators whose economics depend on them.

Summary

Project Nexus replaces the region’s tangle of bilateral payment links with a single gateway, allowing each connected instant payment system to reach all others. With Nexus Global Payments established in Singapore and India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia among first movers, rollout is under way through 2026, targeting settlement in under a minute. Finance, treasury and compliance teams should review the scheme rules now, particularly on real-time screening obligations and liability allocation, and should expect competitive pressure on cross-border payment pricing.