BASEL, Switzerland—The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has unveiled Project Nexus, a platform it said is designed to link domestic faster payment systems for instant cross border payments.
The effort builds on a project between Singapore and Thailand which links the two country’s faster payment systems allowing cross border payments with just a phone number, according to the BIS. Apart from instant payments, Project Nexus enables cheaper and more transparent transfers, Ledger Insights stated.
With Project Nexus each faster payment system would integrate once with the Nexus platform and get access to all the other connected faster payment networks.
“In many ways, this sounds like a routing network. However, cross border payments have additional complexities such as foreign exchange and sanctions screening,” Ledger Insights said.
The report noted a key point is that Project Nexus does away with the concept of correspondent banking accounts.