UPI Integration With PayNow To Go Live Soon: Singapore Central Bank Official

The integration of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with its Singaporean counterpart PayNow is expected to go live soon. 

“Integration of UPI and Singapore’s PayNow with India is ready and waiting for launch,” news agency PTI quoted Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS’) chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty as saying on the sidelines of the G20 First Working Group’s meeting on financial inclusion in Kolkata.

Mohanty said that the implementation of the project will bring down the cost of sending remittances by as much as 10%. He also added that data-sharing regulations along with cost barriers for adoption and legal hurdles are bigger issues than technological challenges.

Pramod Verma, the chief architect of Aadhaar and India Stack, said that similar integration and interoperability is also likely to be in place with Dubai and a few other countries soon.

The integration will allow users to easily transfer their money across countries through phone numbers and UPI virtual payment addresses (VPAs). This will also help customers cut the cost of remittance.

Meanwhile, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) MD and CEO Dilip Asbe reiterated that three to four countries have already expressed their intent for adopting UPI, and said it would take 2-3 years for the implementation. 

Asbe said that India would provide the ‘technical know-how, software and handholding support’ to the interested nations. 

UPI Dream Run

UPI has emerged as one of the most popular products from the India Stack bouquet. The offering allows users to seamlessly transfer money from a bank account to another user via QR codes and mobile numbers.

The payments system has seen rapid adoption over the last few years. UPI recorded 782 Cr transactions worth INR 12.82 Lakh Cr in the month of December 2022. Overall, the platform put up the best year on record in 2022, processing 7,404.45 Cr transactions worth nearly INR 126 Lakh Cr.

While the agreement with MAS was signed last year, the integration and implementation is in full swing now. The NPCI has hived off a separate arm called NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) to scale UPI deployment across the globe.

The NIPL also marked its Europe foray late last year with its tie up with French digital payments firm Worldline, even as it sped up efforts for launch across Switzerland and BENELUX (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) regions. The UPI service has also seen adoption in countries such as Bhutan, Nepal, Malaysia, Oman and the United Kingdom.

The international payments arm has also partnered with financial institutions such as LuLu Financial, Mashreq Bank, and Network International in the UAE to enable UPI payments.