Singapore and India to Introduce Cross-Border Payments

In line with plans to facilitate cross-border payments within ASEAN, Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Reserve Bank of India have announced plans to link Singapore’s PayNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) real-time payment systems by July 2022. 

The linkage will allow users to make instant, low cost fund transfers directly from one bank account to another between Singapore and India. Fund transfers will be possible from India to Singapore using mobile phone numbers, and from Singapore to India using UPI virtual payment addresses (VPA).

The plans are expected to significantly boost volumes of remittance traffic, multi-entity participation, automation of capital control rules, and enrich message formats. The PayNow-UPI plan will build upon the earlier efforts of NETS and NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) to foster cross-border interoperability of card and QR payments. They are also in line with efforts to boost cross-border payments in ASEAN and form part of a G20 priority at the global level to create faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payments

“Given that PayNow and UPI are integral components of their respective national digital infrastructures, the link between the two systems also paves the way for establishing more comprehensive digital connectivity and interoperability between the two countries,” said Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of MAS.