Decoded: What the India-Singapore real-time payment linkage is all about

India, Singapore cross-border retail payments & remittances amount to over $1 billion annually

On Tuesday, India and Singapore launched a real-time linkage between their respective payment systems – Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow – to facilitate seamless cross-border payments. 

The pact to link UPI and PayNow was signed back in September 2021 to enable users to make low-cost fund transfers between the two countries.

The linkage was kicked off by a live cross-border transaction between Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Managing Director Ravi Menon using mobile phones. 

So what does this linkage aim to achieve and how will the transactions take place? Let’s find