BANGKOK, April 29 (Xinhua) -- The Bank of Thailand (BOT) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) on Thursday launched a linkage of Thailand's PromptPay and Singapore's PayNow real-time retail payment systems.
Calling it "the first of its kind globally," a joint statement by the two sides said the linkage came following several years of collaboration between the BOT and MAS, both countries' payment system operators, bankers' associations and banks.
Customers of participating banks in Thailand and Singapore will be able to transfer funds of up to 1,000 Singapore dollars (about 754.2 U.S. dollars) or 25,000 baht (about 801 U.S. dollars) daily across the two countries, using just a mobile number, according to the statement.
There will be no need to populate information fields such as the recipient's full name and bank account details, as required in a normal remittance.
The statement said the transfers will be completed within several minutes, compared with an average of one to two working days with most cross-border remittance solutions.
"The PromptPay-PayNow linkage represents another key milestone in our digital payments journey. This service by the MAS and the BOT will effectively address customers' long standing pain points in the area of cross-border transfers and remittances including long transaction times and high costs," said BOT governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput.
"MAS' shared objective with BOT is to work with our ASEAN counterparts to expand this bilateral linkage into a network of linked retail payment systems across ASEAN," said Ravi Menon, managing director of MAS. Enditem