India has announced the linking of its popular real-time payment system Unified Payments Interface, or UPI, with Singapore's PayNow online payments system.

What Happened? Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong at a virtual launch function announced the linkage of the payment systems of both countries.

The move is intended to help residents of both countries with faster and more cost-efficient transfers of cross-border remittances.

People in both Singapore and India will now essentially be able to send money in real-time via QR-code-based transfer or simply by entering mobile numbers linked to the bank account.

The facility was launched through token transactions by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das and the managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Ravi Menon using the UPI-PayNow linkage.

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How Does It Work? To begin with, the State Bank of India, Indian Overseas Bank, Indian Bank and ICICI Bank will facilitate both inward and outward remittances while Axis Bank and DBS India will facilitate inward remittances.

For Singaporean users, the service will be made available through DBS-Singapore and Liquid Group, a non-bank financial institution.

“An Indian user can remit up to ₹60,000 in a day (equivalent to around SGD 1,000). At the time of making the transaction, the system shall dynamically calculate and display the amount in both the currencies for convenience of the user,” the RBI clarified in a press release.

DBS Bank Singapore in a statement shared with Benzinga India has elucidated that for now “selected DBS/POSB customers can use PayNow-UPI to transfer funds of up to SGD 200 per transaction, capped at SGD 500 per day.”

The service will be extended to all DBS Bank Singapore and POSB customers come March 31, 2023, with the daily transfer fund cap raised to SGD 1,000.

Both countries plan to include more banks in the linkage for facilitating cross-border payments eventually.

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