Singapore’s PayNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have been linked, making sending and receiving money across the two countries in real-time possible.
This was announced by the Monetary Authority of Singapore on February 23, 2023, and was made in partnership with the Reserve Bank of India.
“The PayNow-UPI linkage is the world’s first real-time payment systems linkage to use a scalable cloud-based infrastructure which can accommodate future increases in the volume of remittance traffic,” the Singapore central bank advised.
“It is also the first linkage to feature a non-bank financial institution as a participant.”
The system will initially be made available to Singapore customers of DBS Bank and fintech payments provider the Liquid Group. The number of eligible institutions will increase in a phased approach until the end of March.
Customers of all Indian banks will be able to receive funds from the start. However, the ability to send funds has been limited to customers of four Indian banks.
