The European Central Bank has entered the "realisation phase" for interlinking Europe's TIPS instant payment settlement engine with India's UPI and with Nexus Global Payments - moving from exploratory study to active implementation.
What's Being Built
Two parallel workstreams are underway. First, a direct TIPS-UPI bilateral link enabling instant EUR-INR payments. Second, a connection to Nexus Global Payments that would give euro area banks access to all Nexus-connected countries (currently India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand) through a single integration.
Swiss Connection
In September 2025, the ECB Governing Council also initiated an assessment of TIPS interoperability with Switzerland's SIC instant payment system, potentially adding CHF to the cross-currency instant settlement network.
Scale of Impact
India is one of the top recipients of remittances from Europe, making the TIPS-UPI corridor commercially significant. Connecting to Nexus would extend euro area reach across Asia-Pacific's largest instant payment markets without requiring separate bilateral integrations for each country.
What This Means
This signals Europe's strategic shift toward instant cross-border interoperability rather than relying solely on correspondent banking rails. For payments professionals, the TIPS-Nexus connection means that a single integration could eventually provide real-time, low-cost access to markets serving nearly 2 billion people.
Sources: Finextra, The Paypers
Update (2026-10-01): When ClearingPost retrieved the ECB's TIPS cross-border payments page on 30 September 2026, it listed Brazil - Pix among the fast payment systems the Eurosystem is working to interlink with TARGET Instant Payment Settlement. The page places that corridor in the investigation phase, described as assessing technical, legal and economic feasibility. India - UPI is the only corridor the page shows in the realisation phase, which it describes as completing the legal arrangements and technical implementation.
The page records Nexus and Switzerland - SIC IP in the investigation phase alongside Brazil - Pix. The ECB said on 20 November 2025 that the Governing Council had decided to start the realisation phase for interlinking TIPS with UPI, and in the same decision opted to continue exploring the feasibility of a potential connection to Nexus Global Payments.
Correction, 1 October 2026: this article originally said the European Central Bank had entered the "realisation phase" for interlinking TIPS with India's UPI and with Nexus Global Payments. That was wrong for Nexus. Under the Governing Council decision the ECB announced on 20 November 2025, the realisation phase applied to the UPI link alone, while work on a connection to Nexus Global Payments stayed at the stage of exploring feasibility.