BIS and MAS publish proposal for enhancing global real-time payments network connectivity

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub Singapore Centre and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have published a proposed blueprint for enhancing global payments network connectivity via multilateral linkages of countries' national retail payment systems.

Titled Project Nexus, the blueprint outlines how countries can fully integrate their retail payment systems onto a single cross-border network, allowing customers to make cross-border transfers instantly and securely via their mobile phones or internet devices. 

The Nexus blueprint comprises two main elements: 

• Nexus Gateways, to be developed and implemented by the operators of participating countries' national payment systems, will serve to coordinate compliance, foreign exchange conversion, message translation and the sequencing of payments among all participants. These gateways will be predicated on a common set of technical standards, functionalities and operational guidelines set out within the proposal. 
• An overarching Nexus Scheme that sets out the governance framework and rulebook for participating retail payment systems, banks and payment service providers to coordinate and effect cross-border payments through the network. 

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. This removes the need for countries to negotiate payment linkages with each jurisdiction on a bilateral basis.

The Nexus blueprint was developed through consultation with multiple central banks and financial institutions across the globe. It builds on the bilateral linkage between Singapore's PayNow and Thailand's PromptPay, launched in April 2021, and benefits from the experience of the National Payments Corporation of India's (NPCI) development and operation of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system. The blueprint can be built upon through continued research and engagement with regulators, payment operators, banks and other industry participants collaborating towards a technical proof-of-concept.

 

Ripple launches liquidity solution with to grow cross-border payments from Japan

Ripple, a provider of enterprise blockchain and cryptocurrency solutions for global payments, has announced the launch of RippleNet’s first live On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service implementation in Japan, in collaboration with SBI Remit, a money transfer provider in Japan, and Coins.ph, a mobile wallet services in the Philippines.

This expanded partnership will see SBI Remit connect with Coins.ph and digital asset exchange platform SBI VC Trade on RippleNet for faster and more affordable cross-border payments from Japan to the Philippines. With ODL now available in Japan, RippleNet customers can leverage the digital asset XRP to eliminate pre-funding and reduce operational costs, unlocking capital and fuel the expansion of their payments businesses. 

Driven by long-term growth trends of foreign workers and cross-border e-commerce in Japan, there is an expected increase in low-value, high-frequency remittances. The Filipino diaspora is currently the third largest in Japan - in 2020, remittance flows from Japan to Philippines sent by overseas Filipino workers totalled approximately US$1.8bn. On top of that, Japan has one of the highest cross-border payment fees in the world. According to The World Bank, remitting from Japan incurs an average cost of 10.5%, while the average cost of sending remittances from G8 countries is 5.92%. 

 

US ACH Network sees growth in volume of nearly 10% in Q2

Robust growth continued for the modern ACH Network in the second quarter of 2021. Payment volume climbed 9.9%, with particularly strong growth in business-to-business (B2B) payments.

The ACH Network processed 7.3 billion payments in the second quarter, 655 million more than the same time in 2020. The value of those payments was US$18.4 trillion, an increase of 24.6% from a year earlier. B2B payments increased 28.7%, to 1.3 billion payments. 

"While the B2B segment was growing before the pandemic, the transformation of business payments from paper has greatly accelerated over the past year," said Jane Larimer, president and CEO of Nacha. "The ACH Network is here to enable fully electronic business-to-business payments."