SINGAPORE – PayNow users who are customers at certain financial institutions can now use the real-time fund transfer service to send money to others in India instantly.
This comes as a linkage between PayNow and its Indian counterpart United Payments Interface (UPI) was launched on Tuesday, as part of wider efforts to enhance the infrastructure for cross-border payments.
The feature, which was first announced in September 2021, will be made available to certain customers of Singapore’s largest bank DBS and fintech company Liquid Group under a phased approach.
These companies will progressively increase the number of eligible users and transaction limits until the end of March.
For a start, selected DBS and POSB customers will be able to use the PayNow-UPI linkage to transfer up to $200 per transaction, capped at $500 a day.
The service will be extended by March 31 to all of the bank’s customers, who will be able to transfer funds of up to $1,000 a day.
Customers of all participating Indian banks – Axis Bank, DBS India, ICICI Bank, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and State Bank of India – will be able to receive funds through the service from the outset.
However, the sending of funds is for now limited to customers of ICICI Bank, Indian Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and State Bank of India, with the scope to be gradually expanded.
“The linkage provides customers with a safe, simple and cost-effective way to make cross-border fund transfers,” said the Monetary Authority of Singapore on Tuesday.
Customers of the participating financial institutions can send and receive funds between bank accounts and e-wallets using just their mobile number, UPI identity or Virtual Payment Address (VPA).
Non-bank financial institutions that are connected directly to PayNow and Fast rely on VPAs to send and receive real-time payments from users of other e-wallets or mobile banking applications.
DBS’ Singapore country head Shee Tse Koon noted that India is one of DBS’ biggest markets for overseas remittances.
“(The linkage) is a particularly welcome addition to our wide-ranging suite of payment solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises, retail customers and especially migrant workers, who now have another convenient option to send money to their loved ones back home,” he said.
The total value of remittances made by migrant workers grew 25 per cent in 2022, compared with 2021, on the bank’s DBS Remit service that allows users to send money overseas without incurring a transfer fee.
The number of new customers who remitted funds to India via DBS Remit also jumped 63 per cent over the same period.
The PayNow-UPI tie-up is the world’s first real-time payment system linkage to use scalable cloud-based infrastructure that can accommodate future increases in the volume of remittance traffic. It is also the first linkage to feature a non-bank financial institution as a participant.
Mr Sarthak Shreya, 29, a senior solutions architect, usually sends money via DBS Remit to his mother’s savings account in India, and to pay his cousin’s school fees.
“It’s fairly easy to use and usually offers a good FX (foreign exchange) conversion rate... However, transferring money to an existing account takes a lot of clicks and it could also take a business day or two to reach the recipient,” he said, adding that PayNow would make it easier to transfer small sums of money.
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