India and Singapore today launched the first-of-its-kind Person-to-Person (P2P) payment facility for seamless cross-border transactions between the two countries with Prime Minister Narendra Modi stating that India has accorded top priority to creating an appropriate environment to encourage innovation and modernisation.

”Our Digital India programme has ensured ease of living and ease of doing business leading to better governance through reforms,” the PM said as he had his Singapore counterpart Lee Hsien Loong participated in the virtual launch of real-time payment linkage between the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and PayNow of Singapore.

RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das and Monetary Authority of Singapore Managing Director Ravi Menon made live cross-border transactions to each other using their respective mobile phones.

Singapore is the first country with which a cross-border P2P payment facility has been launched. This will help the Indian diaspora in Singapore, especially migrant workers and students, and bring the benefits of digitalisation and FINTECH to the common man through the instantaneous and low-cost transfer of money from Singapore to India and vice-versa. Acceptance of UPI payments through QR codes is already available in selected merchant outlets in Singapore.

The virtual launch was preceded by a phone call between the two prime ministers in which they discussed subjects of mutual interest. PM Modi thanked the Singapore leader for his partnership in taking the India-Singapore relationship forward and said he looked forward to working with him under India’s G20 Presidency.

Speaking on the occasion, the PM said the Digital India initiative has also helped governance and made possible unprecedented reforms in public service delivery. ”It is because of India’s digital infrastructure that we were able to directly transfer money to the accounts of crores of people during the Covid pandemic,” he added.

Welcoming the new payment mechanism between India and Singapore, Modi said experts were now predicting that digital wallet transactions in India would soon be higher than cash transactions. In 2022, transactions worth about Rs 126 lakh crores were done through UPI, clearly reflecting how easily and safely India was handling its UPI system.

“The linking of fintech services between India and Singapore will take the technology to a new level,” Modi said., adding it would provide a low-cost real-time platform for remittance transfers to people in both countries.

Modi said the launch of the UPI-PayNow linkage was a gift to the citizens of the two countries, which they were waiting for eagerly.