India, Singapore launch project to link UPI, PayNow for instant fund transfer
The Reserve Bank on Tuesday said India and Singapore will link their respective fast payment systems – Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow, to enable users to make instant, low-cost fund transfers on a reciprocal basis. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the project to link the faster payment system. The linkage is targeted to be operational by July 2022, RBI said in a statement.
“The UPI-Paynau linkage will enable users of each of the two fast payment systems to make instant, low-cost fund transfers on a reciprocal basis without the need to be onboarded to the other payment system.”
RBI said the UPI-PayNow linkage is an important milestone in the development of infrastructure for cross-border payments between India and Singapore, and is in line with the G20’s financial inclusion priorities of driving faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payments. closely related to.
The linkage builds on the earlier efforts of NPCI International Pvt Ltd (NIPL) and Network for Electronic Transfer (NETS) to promote cross-border inter-operability of payments using cards and QR codes between India and Singapore. This will further enhance trade, travel and remittance flows between the two countries.
This initiative is also in line with RBI’s vision to review corridors and charges for cross-border remittances outlined in the Payment Systems Vision Document 2019-21.
It is to be mentioned here that UPI is a mobile based fast payment system that facilitates the customers to make payments round the clock using the Virtual Payment Address (VPA) created by the customer.
This eliminates the risk of the sender sharing bank account details. UPI supports both person-to-person (P2P) and person-to-merchant (P2M) payments and enables the user to send or receive money.
PayNow is Singapore’s fast payment system that enables a peer-to-peer fund transfer service available to retail customers through participating banks and non-bank financial institutions (NFIs) in Singapore.
It enables users to send and receive funds instantly from one bank or e-wallet account in Singapore to another bank in Singapore using just their mobile number, Singapore NRIC/FIN, or VPA.
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