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By linking its TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) system with India and Southeast Asia, the European Central Bank (ECB) is accelerating real-time payments globally and challenging European payment service providers (PSPs) to prepare for faster flows and competitive pressures.

On November 20, 2025, the ECB  that it will advance its ongoing initiative to interlink the Eurosystem’s TIPS system with India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

The ECB’s Governing Council said it will enter the “realisation phase”, the stage focused on detailed design, legal arrangements and technical build-out, for linking TIPS with UPI.

The Council also confirmed it will continue assessing the feasibility of linking TIPS with Nexus Global Payments (NGP), alongside the required legal and technical considerations.

NGP was launched in March 2025 by the central banks and instant payment system operators of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

It builds on Project Nexus, a study led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub Centre in Singapore, with participation from the same central banks.

Incorporated as a non-profit, NGP creates a single technical connection point for participating instant payment systems, eliminating the need for bespoke bilateral integrations.

The ECB said its decision to move forward on connections with the two instant payment systems supports the aims of the G20 roadmap for cross-border payments.

Scheduled to be completed by the end of 2027, the roadmap commits G20 members to a set of quantitative targets on faster, cheaper, more transparent and accessible global cross-border payments.

NGP is targeting “near-zero cost” cross-border payments that can be completed in less than 60 seconds. If achieved, this could significantly disrupt current pricing models and force European PSPs to reassess margins on remittance and e-commerce flows.

Timelines unclear

In October 2024, as covered by 91����ԭ��, the ECB announced plans to establish a bilateral link between TIPS and India’s UPI.

With more than 400m transactions per day, UPI is the highest-volume instant payment system in the world, and India is one of the top ten recipients of EU remittances.

At the time, the ECB also said the Eurosystem will join Project Nexus “if the exploration is successful”.

Although Project Nexus has now transitioned into NGP, operational deployment remains in its early stages.

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In August 2025, NGP hired Andrew McCormack, a former chief operating officer at the UAE’s Etihad Payments, as its first CEO.

In his , NGP noted that McCormack will “lead the operationalisation” of the multilateral network; however, no guidance was offered as to when it will go live.

Writing on  following the ECB’s latest announcement, McCormack said that NGP is “looking forward to finalizing arrangements with ECB & TIPS next year and to expanding the reach of Nexus into the European market”.

Finally, in its October 2024 announcement on cross-border initiatives, the ECB said the Eurosystem is working on a cross-currency settlement service for TIPS, using the European Payments Council’s One-Leg Out (OLO) Instant Credit Transfer (OCT Inst) scheme.

This service will allow instant payments originating in one TIPS currency to be settled in another TIPS currency and in central bank money.

As 91����ԭ�� reported last year, the initial phase is aiming for the euro, the Swedish krona and the Danish krone to be available for cross-currency settlement.

For PSPs, this signals that the Eurosystem is preparing for a world in which multi-currency instant settlement becomes standard, reducing FX friction and operational delays.

Swiss linkage under consideration

The ECB is also studying the possibility of linking TIPS directly to instant payment systems closer to home.

In September 2025, the Governing Council  the initiation of an exploratory phase to evaluate a potential bilateral link between TIPS and the Swiss Interbank Clearing Instant Payments (SIC IP) system.

The exploration phase will run throughout 2026 and will be conducted in collaboration with the Swiss National Bank (SNB).

During the exploration, the two partners will assess the technical, legal and economic feasibility of a potential linkage.

A Swiss linkage would extend real-time payment interoperability to a major non-EU financial centre, strengthening regional integration and offering PSPs a smoother, lower-friction cross-border processing environment.

Looking ahead

Although there is little certainty regarding the launch dates of each of these potential linkages, there is little reason to doubt that cross-border instant payments connectivity will arrive in Europe within the next few years.

In acting now, the ECB is positioning the EU to join a rapidly expanding global network of low-cost, high-speed payment corridors.

Following the world’s first such linkage between Singapore’s PayNow and Thailand’s PromptPay in 2021, bilateral linkages have multiplied rapidly throughout Southeast Asia.

These linkages have now been proven at scale and are considered operationally robust.

India launched its first bilateral linkage with Singapore in 2023, followed by similar linkages with Sri Lanka, Nepal and Mauritius.

As Maha El Dimachki, head of the BIS Innovation Hub in Singapore, told 91����ԭ�� last year, the bilateral linkages between these countries provided the "inspiration" for moving to the multilateral model under Project Nexus.

“The benefit of the experience of these countries that have done bilateral linkages has been invaluable in how we’ve developed Project Nexus,” she said.

“And unless they were tested, we wouldn’t be able to take the learnings from that experience and apply it to the multilateral approach.”

Although Europe still lags Asia in terms of cross-border instant payments innovation, it is nonetheless taking clear steps to catch up within the next few years, driven also by the G20 roadmap.

For European banks and PSPs, this signals a strategic pivot: real-time cross-border connectivity is no longer experimental, but increasingly a baseline expectation.

The ECB’s moves point to a near-term future where cross-border payments become both materially cheaper and materially faster. 

PSPs that rely on traditional correspondent banking models may face revenue compression, but those that invest early in technical readiness, API alignment and instant FX settlement capabilities will be positioned to benefit from new, high-volume corridors.

Payments organisations should begin scenario-planning for instant cross-border flows, assess their existing TIPS connectivity and monitor published specifications from NGP and the ECB. 

Early pilots, internal testing and architecture reviews will be essential to ensure they can meet emerging service expectations once these projects move from the planning phase into live operation.