At Money20/20 USA 2025, Alexandra Johnson, Chief Payments Officer at Nium, discusses about how cross-border payments are evolving and positions Nium not as a traditional PSP, but as global, real-time payments infrastructure focused on moving money across borders instantly, securely and seamlessly for banks, fintechs and other financial institutions.
She explains that the industry is at an inflection point: it’s no longer just about getting a payment from A to B or fixing the last mile. Customers want a secure, fast and frictionless way to move money around the world, and that requires much more than a single RTP (real-time payments) connection. It means integrating connectivity to local schemes with strong compliance tools, robust fraud prevention, data, FX and pay-in capabilities and describes this as a shift from standalone “payments” to “contextual payments,”
Value-added services sit at the heart of this shift as more transactions move in real time. Johnson stresses that “everything about the entire payment experience matters,” particularly when payments are instant and irreversible, and that Nium deliberately builds these capabilities into its infrastructure rather than bolting them on afterward.
On fraud, Johnson notes that fraudsters move faster than anyone else, so defences must keep evolving while highlighting Nium’s Verify solution, which lets customers instantly validate account ownership in over 50 markets globally before sending funds, giving confidence that money is going to the intended beneficiary. From there, Nium is exploring additional behavioural markers and transaction patterns, using its vantage point in the payment flow to build smarter tools, adding that the firm is strengthening its compliance capabilities with AI.
Connectivity for banks is another major theme. Most financial institutions are already connected to SWIFT, and as a former banker, Johnson knows how hard it is to secure resources for new integrations. Nium’s approach is to meet banks where they are: they can use their existing SWIFT connection to send Nium a standard SWIFT message, just like a wire. Nium then maps that message into the format of local payment schemes, including RTP systems in multiple markets, and sends the payment instantly. This lets banks expand global, real-time capabilities quickly while they work out their longer-term API strategy.
To be truly global, Nium is building both the technology and regulatory foundations to support whatever comes next: real-time schemes, wallets, stablecoins and emerging concepts like agentic payments and views innovations such as stablecoins not as threats but as additional rails that can bolster Nium’s offering when integrated into its infrastructure.
