Money transfer between India, Singapore may be via UPI soon: Report

Singapore, Nov 11: For easy transfer of funds at the lowest possible cost, India and Singapore are soon going to link their fast payment systems, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and PayNow, according to India's High Commissioner in Singapore P Kumaran.

By linking UPI and PayNow, money could be transferred from India to Singapore using mobile phone numbers and from Singapore to India using UPI virtual payment addresses under the proposed linkage (VPA), according to an ANI report.

The project between the two countries is expected to be rolled out soon. In this regard, the central banks of the two countries have been working on it, the report said.

Indian envoy to Singapore said, "Singapore wants to connect its PayNow with UPI and that project will finish sometime in the next few months when that happens anybody sitting in Singapore will be able to send money to their family members in India."

In Singapore, PayNow is almost similar to India's RuPay. It has linkages with other ASEAN countries. If the UPI-PayNow link is completed, India can be connected to those ASEAN countries through Singapore.

The Indian envoy further said, "Most Indian tourists who come here do not have a RuPay card and even if they have it, they might have the domestic RuPay card so it is a bit complicated. So in future, we see a lot of people leaning to digitalisation not carrying a lot of cash, not dependent on international credit cards which have very high fees."

The Indian envoy also told ANI that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to announce the project once it is finalized.

The new project will benefit migrant workers who come to Singapore for a brief period of time and typically sacrifice about 10 per cent of the amount as bank fees for money transfers. There are an estimated 2 lakh workers come to Singapore to work for brief periods.

If the link of UPI-PayNow is completed, it will be a model for establishing an infrastructure for cross-border payments between India and ASEAN countries.