India and Singapore to link their Fast Payment Systems – Unified Payments Interface and PayNow

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Tuesday announced a project to link their respective fast payment systems — Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow — to facilitate instant, low-cost, cross-border fund transfer.

The linkage will enable users of each of the two fast payment systems to make fund transfer from India to Singapore and vice versa using UPI and PayNow. The linkage is targeted for operationalisation by July 2022.

PayNow is the fast payment system of Singapore which enables peer-to-peer funds transfer service.The linkage builds upon the earlier efforts of NPCI International Private Limited (NIPL) and Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS) to foster cross-border interoperability of payments using cards and QR codes, between India and Singapore.