The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has joined the global Project Nexus initiative, aiming to facilitate instant cross-border payments.

Project Nexus, overseen by the Bank of International Settlements, seeks to standardize the way Instant Payment Systems (IPS) connect to each other. Rather than payment systems operators building custom connections for each jurisdiction, they can create a single connection through the Nexus platform. This approach could greatly speed up the expansion of instant cross-border payments.

After a year of testing, Project Nexus was rolled out to Bank Indonesia, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and the Bank of Thailand in March 2023.

This week, RBI announced its collaboration with other countries to link India’s Fast Payments System (FPS) and its Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with their respective FPSs. This collaboration aims to enable cross-border Person-to-Person (P2P) and Person-to-Merchant (P2M) payments.