Nium enables financial institutions to connect to its real-time payments network via Swift

Nium, the leading global infrastructure for real-time cross-border payments, today announced that financial institutions can now use Swift capabilities and their existing Swift infrastructure to connect to Nium’s global real-time payments network.

This connection provides financial institutions with an efficient and cost-effective solution 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 processed through Nium’s network, resulting in faster processing, end-to-end transparency and full traceability for the most common corridors.

For global companies, navigating different financial systems and messaging 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 toward greater standardization, Nium aims to act as a payment messaging facilitator, supporting existing messaging formats while paving the way to new standards. This connection supports Swift MT message formats and ISO 20022 message formats. The latter is currently being migrated by the industry as a new standard for cross-border payments worldwide.

“Nium has become the connection point to the world of real-time money movements” said Alex Johnson, Chief Payments Officer at Nium. “Our global network includes connections to all major real-time payment systems. We recognize that integrating with a new set of APIs may require significant investment from teams that already have limited resources. This new feature 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 made through Nium’s network are processed 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 using this existing solution for payment traceability.

The initiative limits integration effort, streamlines transaction verification and monitoring processes, ensures transparency in payment costs and minimizes the number of intermediaries – resulting in fewer sources of error, better error handling and improved data flow. Additionally, due to Nium’s “zero deduction” payments, beneficiaries are guaranteed to receive the entire transferred amount without any additional fees.

Ouribank, one of Brazil’s leading foreign exchange banks with more than $29 billion in transactions processed, is one of the first financial institutions to implement this connection. “Ouribank’s connection to Nium via the Swift network represents a significant step forward for our international operations.” said Bruno Foresti, director at Ouribank. “This initiative allows us to make international payments instantly (a key Nium differentiator) and reliably, ensuring our customers can transfer money safely and efficiently. This integration with Swift into the Nium network strengthens our ability to offer innovative and high-quality financial solutions, with real-time payments in line with our mission to turn limitations into possibilities.”

You can find more information about connecting to Nium via Swift here.