Indians have witnessed but possibly overlooked a proud national accomplishment. It concerns the virtual launch of a linkage in real time between the biggest public payment platform of India, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and PayNow of Singapore. This will allow Indians and Singaporeans to make payments to anyone in either country with the same ease that Indians are now accustomed to in their daily business lives.
Creating the UPI was a great achievement for India, both from the vantage points of policy and vision, and creating a legal and commercial framework to incorporate it as well as building the technology to support it on such a large scale, not to mention popularising it to ensure that almost all citizens can adopt it, weren’t deeds of trivial importance. The volume and near-ubiquitous presence of UPI-based payment apps in India show that we have truly accepted a global paradigm in terms of electronic payments and commerce.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong who participated in the launch stressed upon the significance of this step which will now make cross-border remittances extremely easy, quick and economical.
The opportunities for businesses and citizens of the two countries that will arise from this capability can only be imagined for now. Potentially, it will create a new Indo-Singapore business ecosystem that would previously have been impossible.
Singapore is the first country with which India has launched a cross-border person-to-person (P2P) payment facility. It can very well be expanded to other countries, especially the Gulf countries which have a huge Indian diaspora.
From times when a few select companies formed the entire backbone of the global credit card system to a world in which we can have our national payment interface connecting to a different national payment network, India has come a long way.
