Instant fund transfers on mobile phones now possible between Singapore and Malaysia

SINGAPORE — Person-to-person (P2P) cross-border fund transfers are now possible between PayNow users in Singapore and DuitNow users in Malaysia.

The launch of the real-time payment systems linkage between Singapore's PayNow and Malaysia's DuitNow was jointly announced by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) managing director Ravi Menon and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) governor Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour. The two marked the launch by executing live cross-border fund transfers to each other at the 2023 Singapore FinTech Festival on Friday (17 November).

"The PayNow-DuitNow linkage is the culmination of a shared aspiration by Singapore and Malaysia to facilitate cross-border payments between the two countries. This linkage represents another step towards ASEAN’s vision for regional payments interconnectivity," said Ravi.

The linkage will allow users to transfer funds instantly between the two countries by using the recipient's mobile phone number or a Virtual Payment Address (VPA), which is an identifier used by non-bank financial institutions in Singapore that is uniquely linked to an individual's bank account.

The new initiative follows an earlier QR payment linkage between Singapore and Malaysia announced in March 2023, enabling cross-border QR payments to merchants in both countries.

Users of participating financial institutions can now send and receive funds of up to S$1,000 or RM3,000 daily. The real-time payment systems linkage is also the first to include the participation of non-bank financial institutions from both countries to provide access to a broader group of users, such as the unbanked.

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In Singapore, customers of Liquid Group, Maybank Singapore, OCBC and UOB will have the service made available to them under a phased approach, where these institutions will progressively increase the number of eligible user groups from 17 November 2023 until the end of January 2024. DBS will join the list of participating institutions at a later stage.

For users in Malaysia, the service will first be available for all CIMB, Maybank and TNG Digital users, with other financial institutions, such as Hong Leong Bank, gradually onboarded thereafter.

"Cross-border payments that are fast, secure and cost-efficient can provide immense benefits, especially for individuals and small businesses in countries with very close economic ties such as Malaysia and Singapore," said Abdul Rasheed.

In 2022, P2P and remittance transactions between Singapore and Malaysia stood at S$2.3 billion or RM7.8 billion.

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