Malaysia – The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) have announced the joint launch of the real-time payment system linkage between Malaysia’s DuitNow and Singapore’s PayNow.
The DuitNow-PayNow linkage enables instant, secure, and cost-effective person-to-person (P2P) fund transfers and remittances between the two countries. It will also be the first to include the participation of non-bank financial institutions from both countries, providing access to a broader group of users.
For users in Malaysia, the service will first be available for all Maybank, CIMB, and TNG Digital’s users. Meanwhile, the same service will be available in Singapore for customers of Liquid Group, Maybank Singapore, OCBC, and UOB under a phased approach.
Other financial institutions will be gradually onboarded, and the number of eligible users will gradually increase until the end of January 2024. This is to provide support for the customer’s familiarity with the new service.
With this new cross-border P2P payment system, eligible consumers of participating financial institutions will be able to send and receive funds of up to RM3,000 or S$1,000 daily by using the recipient’s mobile phone number or VPA.
The DuitNow-PayNow linkage is an outcome of extensive collaboration among the central banks, payment system operators, scheme owners, and participating financial institutions of both countries.
This milestone is expected to improve the cost, speed, access, and transparency of cross-border payments, with users from both countries fully benefiting from the linkage’s cost-effectiveness, inclusivity, and accessibility.
This initiative follows the QR payment linkage announced on March 31, 2023, which enabled cross-border QR payments to merchants.
Datuk Abdul Rasheed Ghaffour, governor at BNM, said, “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. The DuitNow-PayNow linkage enables us to reap these benefits towards our shared growth and prosperity while laying the foundations for scalable cross-border payment networks across and beyond ASEAN.”
Ravi Menon, managing director at MAS, said, “The PayNow-DuitNow linkage is the culmination of a shared aspiration by Singapore and Malaysia to facilitate cross-border payments between our two countries. This linkage represents another step towards ASEAN’s vision for regional payment interconnectivity.”