India and Singapore driving digital innovation with UPI-PayNow-linkage

Until a decade ago paying without cash was a foreign idea. Digitisation changed this notion and made cashless transactions ubiquitous in every other country. In addition, smartphones, 4G, and booming 5G connectivity boosted this revolutionary change and led to the digital transformation of the fintech and banking industries. India geared up and embraced this change, surpassing the number of cash transactions with easy and secure digital payment methods.

India constantly takes efforts to achieve the "Faceless, Paperless, Cashless" status and to boost its digital economy. India came up with various digital payment systems such as NACH, NEFT, RTGS, IMPS and so on based on diverse consumer requirements. Financial organizations adopted UPI payment India gateways for improving transaction security. These gateways simplified the transactions making payments payer-initiated and P2P-focused payments quick, easy, and reliable. Additional features such as cash backs, discounts on bill payments, and other e-commerce websites promoted the acceptance of UPI payment systems among consumers.

India's digital infrastructure, both the software and hardware are attractive investment opportunity for many countries. Supported by government policies and the availability of a large consumer base, India's digital identity is being recognized worldwide as a key business destination. As per a recent McKinsey report, sectors like digital communication services, electronics manufacturing, business process management and IT have the potential to boost India's GDP to $355 to 435 billion dollars by the year 2025.

India's UPI goes international!

After the increase of cashless payments in India, RBI said in one of its latest policy statements (in Feb 2023) that they plan to extend the UPI payment facility to merchants and travelers coming from abroad - both foreigners and NRIs. In addition, India is taking additional steps to make UPI transactions simpler for the Indian diaspora residing outside India.

India's rising digital economy offers strong investment opportunities to various countries. India's UPI digital payment system is available in Singapore, UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, France, BENELUX markets - Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, and Switzerland. It is also understood that India has signed MoUs with 13 other countries that want to adopt the UPI interface to make digital payments.

Singapore's increasing interest in the Indian UPI payment landscape

Singapore, being one of the largest investors in India, capitalized on this opportunity and made a $2 billion dollars investment to build a portfolio of hyper-scale data centers in India. Singapore is also the first country with which India launched its cross-border person-to-person (P2P) payment process.

On February 21, India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Singapore's PayNow were officially connected. PayNow enabled cashless transactions from India to Singapore and vice versa using UPI virtual payment addresses. This was particularly useful for migrants and workers to make low-cost fund transfers without an intermediate third-party payment system in the middle.

The PayNow-UPI project is the first real-time payment systems linkage to use a scalable cloud-based infrastructure. Eight banks, including Liquid Group, DBS, State Bank of India, and Axis Bank from Singapore and India are participating in the PayNow-UPI collaboration to simplify real-time payments systems in the foreign land. The UPI-PayNow linkage is also seen as a significant milestone in the India-Singapore friendship.

The growing interest in India's digital payment systems proves the scale on which any business can grow in the Indian marketplace. It is evident that any small and medium-sized enterprise can test its services in the Indian market irrespective of its location. To know more about this digital venture between India and Singapore :
https://remunance.com/blog/digital-india-and-its-upi-payment-linkage-with-singapore/

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This release was published on openPR.