The Nexus Scheme Organisation (NSO) will manage the Project Nexus in its live implementation stages in Singapore
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, 5 November, 2024: The five central bank partners in Project Nexus have agreed to establish a managing entity, the Nexus Scheme Organisation (NSO), which will manage the project in its live implementation stages, in Singapore.
Nexus aims to enhance cross-border payments by connecting multiple domestic instant payment systems globally.
The BIS Innovation Hub's partners in the project – Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Bank Negara Malaysia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank of Thailand – stated in July 2024 their intention to work towards live implementation. Establishment of the NSO marks a key milestone towards this goal.
In line with its mandate to explore the development of public goods for the central banking community, the BIS will not own or manage any of the NSO’s activities, but it will play a technical advisory role.
In this capacity, the BIS has published detailed technical documentation covering the implementation guides for each type of participant in the Project Nexus scheme, along with ISO 20022 message and API specifications. These key elements are necessary to meet international standards and facilitate scalability for future participants.
More than 70 countries already have instant (or "fast") payment systems that allow people to send money to each other within seconds. However, sending money abroad is often still slow and expensive. Connecting these domestic payment systems internationally could improve the speed, cost and transparency of cross-border payments.
Nexus is designed to standardise the way that these systems connect to each other. Rather than a payment system operator building custom connections for every new country that it connects to, the operator can make one connection to the Nexus platform. This single connection allows an instant payments system to reach all other countries in the network. Nexus could significantly accelerate the growth of instant cross-border payments
The Nexus blueprint has been developed over 3 years with significant input from instant payment system operators, central banks, commercial banks and payment service providers and FX providers who have a significant presence in FX markets and cross-border payments.
The BIS and partners also welcomed the European Central Bank’s recent announcement of its intention for the Eurosystem to join Nexus as a special observer as part of exploratory work on linking its TARGET Instant Payment Settlement with other fast payment systems. The Eurosystem and Central Bank of Indonesia are special observers to the project after having contributed to earlier phases of the work.
