Asia is the most active region for growth in real-time payments according to HSBC's Global Payment Trends Report 2026. Moreover, India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) handles more than 640 million transactions a day. Banks, fintechs, regulators and consumers all want the same outcome: cross-border payments that work as quickly, as cheaply and as easily as domestic ones.

That ambition raises a practical question for the banks and processors running these systems. How can they extend real-time capabilities across borders while managing the added operational complexity and working within legal and regulatory frameworks that differ from one country to the next?

Linking domestic instant payment systems across the region

Most real-time payment schemes still operate within a single market. Yet demand for instant cross-border payments continues to rise, and it is strongest among individuals and small and medium-sized businesses. Asia-Pacific leads in setting up the arrangements that link national fast payment systems to one another. A cross-border payment begins and ends in each country's own domestic system, so strong national infrastructure remains a precondition for it to work well.

Singapore's PayNow and Thailand's PromptPay offer a clear example. Customers send funds using a mobile number. The service carried just over 870,000 cross-border transfers during 2024, 16% more than in the year before. Money reaches the recipient within minutes, and senders can see the fees and charges before they confirm.

UPI also connects to PayNow for payments between individuals. Separately, markets including Singapore, Sri Lanka, the UAE and Qatar accept UPI applications through QR codes, so Indian travellers can pay merchants there.

Shared infrastructure serving several markets at once is also in development. The central banks of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand have created a legal entity called Nexus Global Payments, with production planned during 2027. The George Town Accord, signed in October 2025, sets out the basis for shared cross-border standards covering QR, account-to-account payments and wallets. Wallet aggregation offers another route to regional connectivity.

Operational and security challenges

Interoperability remains difficult. Cross-border payment rails in APAC connect markets that use different domestic payment systems, digital wallets, protocols and regulatory frameworks.

ISO 20022, the international standard for payment messaging, supports interoperability, structured payment data, automated reconciliation and financial crime compliance. However, implementation varies across countries and trade corridors, so those benefits are not yet consistent.

Speed brings its own risks. When funds move out more quickly, financial institutions and law enforcement agencies have less time to step in. Cross-border payment security rests on monitoring in real time and strong controls, supported by collaboration between banks, fintechs and regulators.

Ageing systems add a further constraint. They are costly to maintain, difficult to connect to newer services, and expensive to scale. Modern payment infrastructure is designed around flexibility, scalability and resilience, with modules that can go live one at a time while day-to-day operations continue.

How HPS enables connected, real-time payment ecosystems

PowerCARD-Switch is the HPS engine for real-time payments, directing each transaction along the right path across connected systems. It handles protocol conversion, routing and authorisation management in real time. For cross-border payments, the platform also provides ISO 20022 messaging, connections to multilateral hubs, and digital wallet and QR interoperability.

PowerCARD V4 extends real-time processing across the whole platform, including functions that have historically run in batches. Transaction management, currency conversion, settlement and accounting all operate instantly, so a payment can be handled from the merchant through to the customer's bank account entirely in real time.

Wider capabilities relevant to cross-border payments include multi-rail settlement, which allows transactions to be settled across several payment systems, and AI-driven real-time fraud monitoring.

HPS has practical experience of connecting payment systems across borders. One regional switching operator in West Africa runs PowerCARD-Switch, Issuer, Acquirer, ATM, xPOS, Wallet, ACH, Fraud, Tokenisation and eSecure, with full outsourcing services for 40 banks. HPS is also enabling connections with other African switches, starting with Nigeria and Ghana, as part of that operator's continent-wide interoperability initiative.

In Asia-Pacific, an expanding foreign bank operating across 15 markets deployed PowerCARD on a single platform. It supports traditional card payments, account-to-account payments, digital wallets and real-time payment systems. The institution manages more than 100,000 debit cards and operates over 120 ATMs. Annual volume runs to more than 10 million transactions.

Prepare your payment infrastructure for regional connectivity

APAC is making measurable progress in linking domestic real-time payment networks and building wider regional connectivity. Interoperability and standardised data are still being worked through, and fraud controls have to keep pace. The infrastructure question is the immediate one. As real-time cross-border payments develop, institutions need platforms capable of supporting several ecosystems at once.

Talk to the HPS Sales team at sales@hps-worldwide.com about your cross-border payment modernisation strategy, and see how the PowerCARD platform handles real-time payments, processing and operational management across connected ecosystems.