Cross-border payments come with a timing problem.
When you approve a payroll run, seller payout, or supplier invoice, you're making a commitment. But the FX rate isn’t locked. Days or weeks can pass before the money leaves your account, and rates move. Your margin erodes. Your budget forecast breaks. You’re stuck absorbing losses, repricing customers mid-cycle, or building separate treasury infrastructure just to hedge recurring payouts.
That’s why we’ve added a new settlement timeline option to our embedded FX toolkit: FX Forward.
FX Forward lets you lock rates at approval, not execution.
Designed to give Nium customers flexibility across every payment timeline, FX Forward lets you lock exchange rates up to 30 days in advance at the moment a payment is approved, not when it’s executed. The rate you agree to on day one never changes, regardless of market movement in between.
How does FX Forward work?
- Request a quote. Tell Nium the payment amount, currency pair, and settlement date (up to 30 days away). You get a fixed rate and see the collateral requirement upfront.
- Post collateral. Set aside 5-7% of the payment amount in USD, EUR, or GBP. This is held separately while the FX Forward is open.
- Lock the rate. Once collateral is posted, your rate is fixed. It never changes, regardless of market movement between now and settlement.
- Execute on settlement day. Fund the full payment amount. Nium converts at your locked rate into your destination currency account. The converted funds are then available for you to initiate the payout. Any mark-to-market losses or fees are deducted from your collateral; the remainder is released back to you at settlement.
Which businesses can benefit from FX Forward?
Businesses of all types making cross-border payouts* can use FX Forward to realize new opportunities.
- Payroll platforms — quote end customers a fixed cost when approving runs two to four weeks before payday, eliminating execution-day surprises.
- Marketplaces — lock the rate when committing seller payouts at transaction time, protecting both the seller’s payout and the platform’s margin through disbursement.
- AP and spend management platforms — know the cost when invoices are approved, days or weeks before payments execute, simplifying cash flow forecasting and customer billing.
- Travel platforms and agencies — lock rates at booking when booking across multiple currencies and charging customers later, protecting customer pricing and margin exposure across the travel period.
- Regional banks and FIs — quote corporates on future-dated payments with confidence, protecting margin through the quote-to-settlement window.
- SME payment platforms — gain advance rate certainty for known future obligations, improving customer confidence and internal forecasting.
Where does FX Forward fit inside the payout workflow?
Unlike most FX products that require separate integrations and treasury expertise, FX Forward integrates into the APIs you already have: Quote and Conversion. This is exactly what Nium does today with spot trade and lock and hold; FX Forward simply extends that same seamless integration with a 30-day tenor option.
Existing Nium customers can extend their current setup in weeks. New customers benefit from streamlined implementation built on standard payout infrastructure, not a separate treasury system. You approve a payment, lock the rate if the timing makes sense, and execute on your schedule.
Where is FX Forward available today?
*FX Forward is available now to all Nium customers in the UK and Europe. Phase 2 will expand availability globally.
Engineered for certainty across every payment.
With Nium’s embedded FX toolkit, you can move money instantly at spot rates, lock in certainty for 24 hours, or guarantee the rate today and settle weeks later with FX Forward. One provider. One integration. Every payment covered.
Ready to explore how advance rate certainty could improve your margins or simplify your forecasting? Reach out to your Nium Account Manager to discuss your approval-to-execution timeline and get started.
New to Nium and curious about our embedded FX toolkit? Tell us what you're building →
