The central banks of India and Singapore have launched a project to link their respective fast payment systems, UPI in India and PayNow in Singapore, to enable asset transfers on the two organizations without getting on-boarded onto the other payment framework, the Reserve Bank of India said on Tuesday.
The linkage between the two is targeted for operationalization by July one year from now.
The central bank added that the up-and-coming linkage expands upon the earlier endeavors of NPCI International Private Limited (NIPL) and Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS) to enable cross-line interoperability of payments utilizing cards and QR codes, among India and Singapore.
“The UPI-PayNow linkage is a significant milestone in the development of infrastructure for cross-border payments between India and Singapore, and closely aligns with the G20’s financial inclusion priorities of driving faster, cheaper and more transparent cross-border payments,” the RBI said.
This will not be the first time that UPI has investigated use cases in unfamiliar markets. In July, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) had launched the payment framework in Bhutan and as of late it partnered with Mashreq to offer acceptance of the UPI in the UAE.
UPI, which is counted amongst the best real-time payments systems globally, handled 3.55 billion or 355 crore transactions worth Rs 6,39,116 crore in August after it crossed 3 billion monthly transactions in July interestingly since its inception in 2016.
