Cross-border payments are notoriously slow, expensive, and opaque — a pain point felt by millions of workers sending remittances home, regional businesses paying suppliers, and even global enterprises managing treasury flows. The Middle East, despite being one of the world’s largest remittance hubs, has historically lagged in bringing true real-time speed to international money movement. But the tide is turning.

At Sibos 2025, Nium — a Singapore-based fintech specializing in real-time global payouts — and Emirates NBD, one of the region’s biggest banking groups, announced a major expansion of their partnership. The move extends instant payout capabilities across the Emirates NBD Group, including Emirates Islamic Bank, with a Saudi Arabia rollout already underway. For the Gulf, this is more than just a technical upgrade; it signals how the region’s largest banks are racing to modernize cross-border money flows and bring them closer to the “send in seconds” experience that users expect.

“Over the past year, our partnership with Emirates NBD has continued to scale, enabling real-time money movement from the Middle East to the world,” said Anupam Pahuja, Chief Revenue Officer at Nium.

“With the extension of the service across the wider Emirates NBD Group in the UAE and preparations in Saudi Arabia, we are delivering on our vision to make global payments instantaneous, accessible and cost-efficient for all.”

Why this matters (and why now)

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have been rapidly developing domestic instant-payment infrastructure; regulators and banks are now connecting those rails to cross-border corridors. The Central Bank of the UAE has already been working with Swift to tie the UAE’s domestic system to Swift’s gpi Tracker for better speed and transparency—exactly the ingredients that make “instant” across borders feel real to end users.

Yousuf Saeed Mohd, Group Head of Priority and Personal Banking and Retail Banking Sales at Emirates NBD, commented,

“Emirates NBD has always embraced innovation to enhance customer experience. Our deepening collaboration with Nium strengthens our ability to provide fast, secure and affordable remittance services across multiple markets. Extending the partnership to the wider Emirates NBD Group in the UAE and soon to Saudi Arabia reflects our commitment to leading the next chapter of cross-border payments in the region.”

What’s actually expanding

Practically, Nium brings a global real-time payout network; Emirates NBD supplies regional reach and compliance plumbing across its franchise (Emirates NBD + Emirates Islamic). The latest expansion means UAE customers can push funds out 24/7 with end-to-end transparency, and the first KSA corridors are in flight—important for remittances, supplier payouts, and marketplace disbursements where minutes matter.

Emirates NBD’s “stack” is getting interesting

This isn’t a one-off integration. Over the last year ENBD has layered several components that, together, de-friction cross-border money:

• 24/7 USD clearing with Citi—covering the world’s settlement currency around the clock.
• Real-time payee verification via iPiD—reducing misdirected transfers and fraud.
• Connectivity to J.P. Morgan’s Kinexys Confirm for account validation—improving pre-payment certainty.
• A partnership with Partior for multi-currency blockchain-based settlement—future-proofing for programmable, near-instant clearing.

Individually useful; collectively, a coherent architecture for faster, safer, cheaper international money.

How it stacks up against the competition

• Wise & local bank tie-ups: Wise has been partnering with Gulf banks (e.g., Saudi Awwal Bank) to deliver cheaper, near-real-time transfers with mid-market FX and app-native UX. Nium+ENBD is the bank-fintech route with corporate depth and multiple rails, while Wise excels in consumer/SOHO flows and radical fee transparency.
• Card-scheme cross-border (Mastercard Move / Visa Direct): Schemes are lighting up near-real-time account and card payouts across new markets—including the Middle East—and experimenting with tokenized settlement (USDC pilots). Great for reach and speed, but economics can vary by corridor. Nium+ENBD competes by blending account-to-account speed with bank-grade compliance and FX controls.
• Swift gpi & bank networks: Swift gpi remains the industry baseline for speed and traceability; many ME banks route through it. Nium provides an overlay with additional instant corridors and payout types; ENBD’s gpi-aligned infrastructure should complement—not replace—those flows.

What Alertify readers should watch next

• Saudi Arabia go-live details: which currencies, which corridors, and whether instant “last mile” reaches local accounts around the clock.
• FX transparency: clear spreads and fee disclosures will determine user trust—especially for SMEs and marketplaces.
• Risk & name-check rigor: ENBD’s iPiD and Kinexys integrations suggest fewer failed payments and returns—watch the stats.
• Interoperability: how this plays with Swift gpi, card-scheme payouts, and future tokenized settlement (Partior, stablecoins) will shape cost and speed across routes.

The bottom line (a real conclusion)

In a market crowded with “fast cross-border” claims, the Nium–Emirates NBD expansion looks substantive because it couples a specialist real-time payout network with a top regional bank that’s already modernizing every layer of its cross-border stack (24/7 USD clearing, real-time payee verification, network validations, and even blockchain-based settlement on the horizon). Compared with Wise’s consumer-first, ultra-transparent model and Mastercard/Visa’s increasingly real-time, card-anchored rails, Nium+ENBD positions itself as the bank-fintech hybrid best suited for enterprise and marketplace disbursements in MENAT—where compliance, corridor breadth, and uptime trump app gloss. If KSA goes live with true instant last-mile and ENBD keeps publishing clean FX and delivery-time SLAs, this partnership could become the reference model for Gulf cross-border payments, not just another press-release partnership.