(Bloomberg) -- India and Singapore will link their fast-payment systems to step up cross-border payments and remittance flows, which amount to more than $1 billion each year currently.
India’s Unified Payments Interface will be joined with Singapore’s PayNow by July 2022 to enable users to make instant, low-cost fund transfers while staying on their own systems, the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement Tuesday.
This “will further anchor trade, travel and remittance flows between the two countries,” the RBI said.
The announcement is the latest in fintech co-operation between the two Asian hubs, after they boosted interoperability using cards and QR codes. About $900 million was remitted from Singapore to India in 2017, according to Statista data, and Indian tourists in Singapore spent some $200 million between January to September 2020, excluding sightseeing, entertainment and gaming, according to official Singaporean data.
India has seen a multifold rise in digital payments led by UPI, which is an open-ended platform that allows all entities to onboard and offer retail payment services after the pandemic forced individuals to shop online. Singapore’s PayNow allows users to send and receive instant funds from one bank or e-wallet account to another in Singapore by using their mobile number.
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