Nium Forms Cross-Border Payments Pact With Indonesia’s BRI

Cross-border payments company Nium has launched a collaboration with Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI).

The partnership lets BRI’s 150 million-plus account holders — many of whom live in remote parts of Indonesia, a nation of 17,000 islands — make real-time international money transfers across a range of payment methods, according to a Friday (Oct. 18) news release.

“By integrating Nium’s advanced technology into BRI’s platform, we are dedicated to providing BRI’s customers, no matter where they are, with access to exceptional financial services,” Anupam Pahuja, general manager for Nium’s operations in Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa, said in the release.

“This partnership will remove the risks associated with cash handling and provide faster, more cost-effective transactions — whether individuals are sending money to family members abroad or businesses are making international payments.”

The release says cross-border payments in Indonesia are projected to climb 15% year-over-year over through 2025, fueled largely by financial services’ digital transformation.

PYMNTS explored the importance of improving the cross-border payments experience in a recent conversation with Andy Elliott, VP of strategy at EvonSys, and Tanja Haase, global product lead – payment experience at global messaging network Swift.

Speaking with PYMNTS during its B2B 2024 event, the two executives said improving the front-end experience for cross-border payments is crucial, with both Haase and Elliott noting that 80% of small businesses and consumers first go to their banks when they need to make an international payment. If banks get this wrong, those customers might not come back.

As Elliott noted, for small business clients, banks are still the top dog in the cross-border space, owning about 49% of the retail banking marketing share. That’s a direct result of the challenges of cost, speed and overall experience.

“The process is more complicated than it needs to be,” Elliott said.

Banks might indicate that a payment will be deposited into a foreign beneficiary’s bank account within three to five days. The costs could be as high as $40 a transaction, and the fees are opaque.

Around 70% of consumers and small businesses, Haase said, have said they would not go back to the same provider again, not if hidden fees were levied, and they did not know the precise amount that would be credited to the end beneficiaries.

“The good news is that many banks are investing in their payments technology and are seeking to address the friction inherent in end-user experiences in the digital banking channels — but they need to upgrade the front-end portion of those experiences,” PYMNTS wrote.