MIAMI —The competitive question in cross-border payments is shifting from headline speed to execution. Real-time capability is increasingly expected; banks now want to know whether a payment will complete, how reliably it will arrive and what happens when the preferred route fails. Nium argues that direct participation in domestic payment infrastructure gives it more control over that outcome than providers that depend on aggregators or additional intermediary hops.

Nium-commissioned research of 210 banks and 210 corporates across 17 markets found that 65% of businesses want cross-border payments completed within minutes or instantly, while only 18% receive that speed from their banking partners. Failed payments also translate into supplier dissatisfaction and supply chain disruption.

Yogesh Sangle, Executive Vice President for APAC at Nium, said the conversations at Sibos have consequently become more specific. Banks are asking about operational performance, failure rates and completion rates, not simply whether a provider offers real-time payments. For Nium, that shifts the proposition from providing another payment rail to proving that its network can deliver payment certainty at bank scale.

Nium is not trying to replace every correspondent payment

Sangle drew a clear boundary around where Nium sees its model competing with traditional correspondent banking. The company allows banks to use their existing Swift messaging flow and treat Nium as a correspondent; Nium can then convert the instruction into a real-time payment over its own connectivity. That reduces the need for a bank to replace core systems simply to reach newer payment rails.

For smaller cross border payments, Sangle argued that direct local connectivity can remove intermediary hops, improve end-to-end tracking and reduce requests for information that interrupt transactions. Nium says more than 60 banks and financial institutions use its infrastructure.

Sangle did not argue that this model should replace correspondent banking everywhere. For corporate payments of $15 million or $100 million, he said the traditional chain can still be appropriate; he positioned direct routing more strongly around payments below $1 million.

That distinction makes the proposition more credible. The issue is not whether one rail wins, but whether a bank can route different payment types through infrastructure suited to the value, corridor and service requirement.

Completion depends on control of the route, liquidity and compliance

Sangle attributed Nium’s completion performance to three elements. First is direct participation in payment systems and direct connections with banks, which reduce dependence on aggregators and additional hops. Nium connects directly to central banks and clearing houses in key markets, including access to real-time domestic payment infrastructure such as Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) Instant in Europe. Second is liquidity in local markets. Third is a compliance engine intended to limit unnecessary friction while applying the checks required for each transaction.

Sangle did not provide a completion rate figure, describing Nium’s rates only as high. More important is how it protects completion: if one bank or route fails, the network can use alternatives, including Swift where appropriate, while keeping the choice of rail in the background.

Compliance is part of the same operating model. Nium is licensed in 40 countries and has distributed operational and compliance teams. Sangle said this means corridors have to meet the standards required by Nium’s own licences, not only those required by a particular bank customer.

AI is being applied to payment repair, not only productivity

Nium’s use of artificial intelligence (AI) is also being tied directly to completion. Sangle described an example in which a bank supplied an incorrect account-type field. Nium detected the inconsistency, checked it with the bank, corrected the data and completed the transaction within seconds. He contrasted that with a conventional flow in which the payment could have been rejected.

The example is narrow but important. Rather than treating AI as a separate product, Nium is using it to detect data problems and reduce requests for information and other friction before they become failed payments. That connects the technology investment directly to the operating measure banks are increasingly asking about.

Stablecoins are first a treasury and settlement tool

Sangle described the strongest current institutional stablecoin use case as treasury efficiency rather than traditional remittances. The problem is prefunding: payment companies and banks hold money in nostro and settlement accounts to support transactions across currencies and operating hours.

Under the Monetary Authority of Singapore-led BLOOM initiative, Nium and Visa are piloting stablecoin settlement seven days a week. Sangle said more continuous settlement can reduce trapped liquidity, giving the illustrative comparison of holding $2 million instead of $30 million with Visa for the same payment volume.

Nium is also connecting stablecoin settlement with fiat payouts through Circle and Coinbase. Sangle did not present stablecoins as a replacement for fiat: some bank customers remain experimental, and Nium can fall back to fiat when required without exposing the change in settlement mechanism to the end customer.

The bank conversation has moved from proof of concept to implementation

Sangle also saw an organisational change. Nium once dealt mainly with innovation and strategy teams and was frequently asked to run proofs of concept; discussions are now increasingly with transaction banking, retail and other business teams about implementation at scale.

He pointed to Indonesian bank implementations as evidence of that shift. Nium works with Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI), while Sangle said BRI had recently gone live and cited Maybank as another recent deployment. The significance is the buying behaviour: established banks are asking how to put the infrastructure into production instead of whether to experiment with it.

That raises the standard for Nium. Real-time reach alone is no longer enough; banks want completion, visibility, resilience and compliance. Nium’s proposition is that direct, correspondent, stablecoin and fiat rails can remain in the background as long as the payment completes.