Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, and Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, have officially connected PayNow of Singapore and India’s retail payment system the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) via video conferencing.
Shaktikanta Das, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and Ravi Menon, Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, have completed a live cross-border financial transfer.
Why PayNow and UPI get linked?
When the system is in place, money transfers can be done using mobile phone numbers from India to Singapore and UPI virtual payment addresses (VPA) from Singapore to India, according to a news release from Singapore. Users will be able to send money instantly and cheaply between Singaporean and Indian bank accounts thanks to the PayNow-UPI connectivity. It was merged today to allow for quicker and more affordable remittances between the two nations.
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Modi said, "Linkage of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow is a new milestone in India-Singapore relations," PM Modi said, calling UPI “the most preferred payment mechanism” in India as “74 billion transactions amounting to more than ₹126 trillion were done through UPI in 2022.”
“Many experts are estimating that digital wallet transactions are going to soon overtake cash transactions.”
What are the benefits for Indian and Singapore citizens?
Users of the two rapid payment systems will be able to send and receive funds instantly and cheaply thanks to the UPI-PayNow linkage without having to sign up for the other system.
The rapid and inexpensive money transfers from Singapore to India and vice versa will also benefit the Indian diaspora in Singapore, particularly migrant workers and students.
