Tag: PayNow

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.”

Singapore – Google’s digital wallet platform Google Pay has made a number of enhancements exclusively for Singapore users that will see an easier and further seamless use of features on the app. 

One of the latest updates is Google pay’s integration with Singapore’s national real-time payment service PayNow, which now allows users in Singapore to send money to anybody in the country, even if they’re not on Google Pay, with users only needing the person’s phone number. 

The feature has been previously introduced for OCBC customers earlier in the year, and now Google Pay will be extending it to customers of DBS Paylah! and Standard Chartered Bank. 

Customers of the said banks can also use their linked accounts to pay any business that has a PayNow QR code displayed, allowing merchants to receive payments in their corporate bank accounts.

In addition to the improved transaction process, Singapore will be the first country where Google Pay users can form groups to organize and manage payments, as well as divide bills and other joint expenses within the app.

Googe Pay Singapore

Google Pay has also announced added features for delivery and movie bookings, anticipating that more Singaporeans will dine out and watch movies amid lesser COVID-related restrictions.

Singapore users can now browse cuisines and order takeout or delivery with the Order Food feature on the app. Meanwhile, for movie enjoyment of the users, Google Pay has just added Golden Village locations in addition to Shaw Theatres, giving moviegoers a total of 174 cinema venues to choose from across Singapore. Users can now be able to skip queuing by booking a movie ticket and reserving a seat instantly within the app.

To make it fun to use Google Pay, the app will be giving out rewards for transactions in the form of virtual scratchcards, which users can virtually ‘scratch’ to find out a corresponding prize. Users can earn scratchcards with instant cashback rewards on qualifying transactions, with bonuses when a user has successfully referred Google Pay to a friend.

Director of Engineering Patrick Teo said that the motley of enhancements in the platform were undertaken on Google’s belief that Payments don’t take place in isolation, but are part of the daily interactions users have with friends, family and local businesses. 

“We built Google Pay around these everyday relationships, to make it quick and easy to transact with the people and businesses you know. In just a few taps, you’ll be able to see a past payment with a business, or find a friend to pay. Plus, sending money to someone new is as easy as sending a chat message—just start entering their phone number,” said Teo.