Singapore promotes instant payment system connectivity in Southeast Asia

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) building.(Photo: AFP/VNA)

Singapore – The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said on March 23 that the Nexus Project prototype of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has successfully connected with the payment systems of Europe, Malaysia and Singapore.

To enhance cross-border payments, the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Centre developed the Nexus concept of a first-of-its-kind multilateral network connecting multiple domestic instant payment systems (IPS).

Nexus prototype successfully connected the test IPS of the Eurosystem, Malaysia and Singapore, allowing payments to be sent across the three using only mobile phone numbers.

In the next phase, BIS and the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand will jointly work towards connecting their domestic IPS through Nexus.

For the next phase of the project – in line with their November 2022 Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Regional Payment Connectivity – Bank Indonesia, BNM, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, MAS and the Bank of Thailand will leverage experiences from Phase I and Phase II of the project towards connecting their countries' IPS and facilitate cross-border transactions across a combined population of about 500 million people.

MAS chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty said the success of Nexus prototype is a breakthrough that demonstrates the technical capabilities of multilateral instant payment systems.

According to him, the next phase of experiments by the five ASEAN central banks will be crucial in laying the foundations for future implementation at big scale.

Prototype Nexus is designed to address differences between national payment systems. Under the Nexus blueprint, participating countries will only need to adopt the Nexus protocols once to gain access to the broader cross-border payments network.

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