Singapore, India’s central banks to link PayNow and UPI by July 2022

The central banks of India and Singapore have announced plans to link their respective real-time payment services by July 2022.

The linking of Singapore’s PayNow and India’s unified payments interface (UPI) will provide users an easier way to make instant and low-cost fund transfers from one bank account to another between the two countries.

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Fund transfers from India to Singapore will use mobile phone numbers, while those from Singapore to India will use UPI virtual payment addresses (VPAs), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said in a statement.

According to the Singapore central bank, the experience of transferring funds from a PayNow VPA to a UPI VPA will be similar to that of a domestic transfer to a PayNow VPA.

MAS hopes the linkage will pave the way for increased remittance traffic, multi-entity participation, and more developments in cross-border payment systems.

“By reducing the cost and inefficiencies of remittances between Singapore and India, the PayNow-UPI linkage will directly benefit individuals and businesses in Singapore and India that greatly rely on this mode of payment,” said Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer of MAS, in the bank’s statement.

Separately, the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), an umbrella organization for operating retail payments and settlement systems, has partnered with Singapore-based fintech firm Liquid Group to provide QR code-based UPI payment services in 10 countries in North Asia and Southeast Asia.

The partnership will enable users to make UPI QR code-based payments at more than 2 million merchants across both regions from early 2022, NPCI and Liquid Group said in a joint statement.