The initiative allows banks to make payments through Nium using their existing Swift capabilities, eliminating the need for complex API integration and lowering cost of cross-border transfers

BEIJING, Oct. 20, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Nium, the leading global infrastructure for real-time cross-border payments, today announced that financial institutions can now leverage Swift capabilities and their existing Swift infrastructure to connect to Nium's global real-time payments network. This connection provides an efficient and cost-effective solution for financial institutions to connect to Nium's global infrastructure, eliminating the need for costly and resource-intensive API integrations. Cross-border payments initiated via Swift can be completed on Nium's network, resulting in faster settlement, end-to-end transparency, and full traceability for most popular corridors.

For global businesses, navigating disparate financial systems and message formats can be a barrier to market expansion. The lack of standardization, coupled with the need for tailored integrations, often limits access to new opportunities. However, as the industry moves to more standardization, Nium looks to serve as a payment messaging facilitator, supporting existing messaging formats, while bridging the path to new standards. This connection supports Swift MT message formats and ISO 20022 messaging, the latter of which the industry is in the process of migrating as the new standard of cross-border payments worldwide.

"Nium has become the connecting point to the world of real-time money movement," said Alex Johnson, Chief Payments Officer at Nium. "Our global network includes connections to all the popular real-time payment systems. We understand that integrating with a new set of APIs can require significant investment from already resource-constrained teams. This new capability makes it easy to redirect existing payment flows to Nium and benefit almost immediately from the speed, transparency, and security of our real-time payments network."

More than 80% of payments completed on Nium's network will settle within 15-minutes, an important consideration in today's on-demand economy. Nium receives MT/ISO messages and uses its global infrastructure to route these messages through local clearing and real-time payment rails. Nium ensures that Swift's GPI tracker is updated in real-time, allowing institutions to continue leveraging this existing solution for payment traceability.

The initiative limits integration efforts, streamlines transaction screening and monitoring processes, provides transparency on payment costs, and minimizes intermediaries — resulting in fewer points of failure, better error handling, and improved data flow. Additionally, given Nium's "zero-deduction" flows, beneficiaries are guaranteed to receive the full amount sent, without additional fees.