India, Singapore digital payment link clocking 100 transactions per day
The cross-border payment tie-up between Singapore’s PayNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface, the first international payment systems link to use scalable cloud-based infrastructure, is currently clocking close to 3,000 transactions a month, benefiting the Indian diaspora through a sharp reduction in remittance costs.
At present, there are around 100 transactions taking place per day. There is a growing acceptance of the PayNow-UPI linkage as a viable, cheaper, and quicker way to handle cross-border transactions,” a source aware of the developments said to ET.
On February 21, India and Singapore launched the real-term linkage between the UPI and PayNow to facilitate instant and cost-effective cross-border fund transfers. Money transfers can be made from India to Singapore using mobile numbers and from Singapore to India using virtual payment addresses.
“Funds held in bank accounts or e-wallets can be transferred to/from India using just the UPI-id, mobile number, or Virtual Payment Address (VPA),” the RBI had said at the time, specifying a remittance limit of up to Rs 60,000 per day.
While the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) provides statistics on products such as the UPI, the Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), the National Financial Switch and the BHIM Aadhaar Pay amongst other products, it has not yet published official data on the PayNow-UPI linkage.