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PM Narendra Modi hails it as ‘new milestone in India-Singapore relations’
In a first-of-its-kind collaboration with another country, India and Singapore linked their respective online payment systems on Tuesday – the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and PayNow of Singapore – enabling safe, instant, and cost-effective cross-border fund transactions between the two countries.
PM Narendra Modi and Singapore PM Lee Hsien Loong participated in the virtual launch of the UPI-PayNow linkage between India and Singapore.
At the launch, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das and Ravi Menon, Managing Director, Monetary Authority of Singapore, were present. They also made live cross-border transactions with each other using their respective mobile phones.
Addressing the event virtually, PM Modi said, “A new milestone in India-Singapore relations as we link real-time digital payment systems.”
“Many experts are estimating that very soon India’s digital wallet transactions are going to overtake cash transactions,” PM Modi said while highlighting that 74 billion transactions were done through UPI last year.
“India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing ecosystems for fintech innovation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visionary leadership has been instrumental in driving the globalisation of India’s best-in-class digital payment infrastructure,” the Indian government had said.
“A key emphasis of the Prime Minister has been on ensuring that the benefits of UPI are not limited to India alone,” it said.
“The linkage of these two payment systems would enable residents of both countries to make faster and more cost-efficient transfers of cross-border remittances. It will also benefit the Indian diaspora in Singapore, especially migrant workers and students, through instantaneous and low-cost transfer of money from Singapore to India and vice-versa,” the government added.
For India, Singapore is the first country with which a cross border person-to-person (P2P) payment facility has been launched. Acceptance of UPI payments through QR codes is already available at selected merchant outlets in Singapore.
Singapore PM Lee said, “The remittances between the two countries currently amount to over $1 billion annually. The UPI-PayNow linkage will grow in utility and contribute more to facilitating trade.”
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also had a telephone call in conjunction with the joint virtual launch of the PayNow-UPI linkage.
“Prime Ministers reaffirmed the strong, broad-based, and forward-looking relationship between Singapore and India, underpinned by frequent high-level exchanges and robust cooperation across various sectors,” Singapore’s foreign affairs ministry said.
Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow are instant real-time payment systems in India and Singapore, respectively. UPI allows users to transfer money across multiple banks without disclosing bank account details. PayNow allows sending and receiving Singapore dollar funds from one bank to another using a mobile number.
