Endava has been formally engaged to lead the end-to-end design and engineering of the Nexus Global Payments platform, working alongside a joint venture between Malaysia’s Payments Network Malaysia and Singapore’s Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore, which was appointed Nexus Technical Operator in February 2026. The platform is designed to connect the domestic real-time instant payment systems of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and India into a single interoperable network, with technical development underway in early 2026 and a live deployment targeted for 2027.
This development marks a concrete transition of Project Nexus from the blueprint and proof-of-concept phase into active engineering, with the PayNet-NETS joint venture, Endava, and Amazon Web Services now each holding defined technical roles in delivering what would become one of the most consequential cross-border payments infrastructure builds in Southeast Asia’s history.
Key Facts At A Glance
- Nexus Global Payments (NGP) appointed the Payments Network Malaysia (PayNet) and Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore (NETS) joint venture as Nexus Technical Operator (NTO) on February 9, 2026, following a competitive global procurement process.
- Endava leads end-to-end design and engineering of the Nexus platform; Amazon Web Services provides cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities.
- The NTO is responsible for building, operating, and maintaining the Nexus infrastructure, including compliance with global standards, cybersecurity, and onboarding of domestic instant payment scheme operators.
- Founding partners of Nexus include the central banks and instant payment system operators of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.
- Technical development began in early 2026; the platform’s first live deployment is targeted for 2027.
- Nexus is designed to allow domestic instant payment system operators to integrate once and gain access to a growing network of countries, eliminating the need for separate bilateral linkages.
- PayNet’s DuitNow QR is already interoperable with domestic schemes in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia; NETS facilitated the first bilateral cross-border account-to-account transfer linkage between Singapore and Thailand in 2021.
- NGP is a not-for-profit organisation founded in March 2025 to manage the Nexus scheme and oversee its global expansion.
From Blueprint To Build
Nexus Global Payments was seeded by the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub’s Singapore Centre, which incubated the initiative from concept through proof-of-concept to a full Phase 3 blueprint. The initiative’s founding partners — the central banks and instant payment system operators of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand — agreed to work toward live implementation, and in March 2025 formally established NGP as the not-for-profit entity responsible for managing the scheme.
The February 2026 appointment of the PayNet-NETS joint venture as Nexus Technical Operator concluded a competitive procurement process that involved global bidders. The joint venture was assessed on technical capability, operational resilience, cost efficiency, and alignment with Nexus’ interoperability objectives. Both PayNet and NETS bring verified cross-border credentials: PayNet operates Malaysia’s DuitNow infrastructure, which is already interoperable with real-time payment schemes in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia, while NETS was party to the first bilateral cross-border account-to-account transfer linkage between Singapore and Thailand established in 2021.
Endava’s Technical Role
Endava’s engagement was confirmed publicly by the company on April 30, 2026, through a detailed commentary by David Marsh, Senior Industry Advisor, APAC, who described the firm’s specific mandate within the Nexus build. Endava is responsible for designing the architecture of the cross-border switch software — the layer that connects individual domestic real-time payment rails into the Nexus network. The firm brings relevant prior experience to this role, having supported payment infrastructure projects including open banking implementation in the United Kingdom, connections to The Clearing House and FedNow in the United States, and payment gateway development across the Middle East and North Africa.
To accelerate delivery on a project of this scale, Endava is applying its internal AI-native delivery methodology, Dava Flow, which the company describes as a framework that integrates AI tooling into the engineering lifecycle while retaining human oversight. Banks and payment system operators involved in the build are running mission-critical workloads on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services, which also serves as a delivery partner on the Nexus platform.
What Nexus Is Designed To Solve
Cross-border payments in Southeast Asia and South Asia currently depend on a patchwork of bilateral linkages between national payment systems, each requiring separate technical integration agreements between operators. This structure limits scale, raises costs, and imposes delays. Nexus addresses this by replacing the bilateral model with a single connection point: once a domestic instant payment system operator integrates with the Nexus switch, it gains access to every other national system within the network.
The result, once live, would allow a user of Singapore’s PayNow, Malaysia’s DuitNow, Thailand’s PromptPay, the Philippines’ InstaPay, or India’s Unified Payments Interface to send funds to a recipient using any of the other systems in near real time, without the sender or recipient needing to know which domestic system the other party uses. This model also reduces reliance on correspondent banking intermediaries and eliminates the need for pre-funded nostro accounts in each cross-border corridor — a significant capital and operational cost reduction for financial institutions.
The NTO will also be responsible for coordinating the onboarding of new domestic instant payment scheme operators as Nexus expands beyond its initial founding member countries. This onboarding function will determine how quickly Nexus can extend its network to additional Southeast Asian markets, including Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia, all of which have active real-time payment systems already partially connected to PayNet’s DuitNow on a bilateral basis.
G20 Alignment And Institutional Backing
Nexus is explicitly aligned with the G20 Cross-Border Payments Roadmap, first launched in 2020, which set targets for speed, cost, access, and transparency in international transactions. The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Managing Director Chia Der Jiun has publicly stated support for the initiative, describing it as consistent with MAS’s cross-border payment priorities. Bank of Thailand Governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput has similarly noted the scheme’s potential to address friction faced by migrant workers and individuals relying on remittance corridors across the region.
With technical development now active and a defined go-live target of 2027, the Nexus build represents the most advanced multilateral cross-border instant payment infrastructure initiative underway in Southeast Asia. Publicly available information does not yet confirm specific milestones, testing timelines, or confirmed transaction volumes for the platform’s initial deployment phase.