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The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) today launched the linkage between Singapore’s PayNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI). This will enable customers of participating financial institutions in Singapore and India to send and receive funds between bank accounts or e-wallets across the two countries in real-time. They can do this using just the mobile phone number, UPI identity, or Virtual Payment Address (VPA). The linkage provides customers with a safe, simple, and cost-effective way to make cross-border fund transfers.
Cross-border retail payments and remittances between Singapore and India amount to over US$1 billion annually. Over the years, we have progressively enhanced our cross-border payment connectivity. In 2018, Singapore’s NETS worked with India’s NPCI International Payments Limited to allow card and QR code payments between our two countries. Today, we are taking retail payments connectivity another step forward.
The PayNow-UPI linkage will offer cheaper, faster, and safer cross-border retail payments and remittances, for businesses and individuals alike, directly between bank accounts or e-wallets. It is convenience at your finger-tips, paying using just your mobile phone number, your UPI identity, or your Virtual Payment Address (VPA).
The PayNow-UPI linkage is India’s first cross-border real-time payment systems linkage, and Singapore’s second. It is also the world’s first such linkage to feature cloud-based infrastructure, and participation by non-bank financial institutions. As we progressively add more users and use cases, the PayNow-UPI linkage will grow in utility, and contribute more to facilitating our trade and our people-to-people links.
