The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) announced that for the first time PayNow has been made available to three non-bank Financial Institutions (NFIs) namely Grab Financial Group, Liquid Group and Singtel’s Dash effective from today onwards.
The addition of the three NFIs aims to boost the adoption and usage of PayNow and accelerate Singapore’s path towards a less-cash, digital economy.
This move enables the users of these NFI e-wallets to make or receive real-time funds transfers with PayNow, without the need for e-wallet account details. These funds transfers can be made between bank accounts and e-wallets, as well as across e-wallets.
The addition of the three NFIs brings the total number of PayNow participating institutions to 12.
This includes the nine PayNow banks: Bank of China, Citi Singapore, DBS Bank/POSB, HSBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Maybank, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and
UOB.
To support this initiative, a new proxy called the Virtual Payment Address (VPA) has been made available, in addition to the existing PayNow proxies; mobile numbers, NRIC/FIN numbers and Unique Entity Numbers (UENs).
VPA helps individuals distinguish between PayNow registrations that are linked to bank accounts, from those linked to NFI e-wallets.
VPA allows individuals to link their mobile number with an NFI ewallet, while keeping their existing PayNow registration that is linked to a bank account. Similar to the nine PayNow bank apps, customers will also be able to use these NFI e-wallets to make payments to merchants by scanning their PayNow-SGQR labels in 2021.
ABS reported that as of 24 January 2021, the total number of PayNow registrations is close to five million, including 2.73 million mobile number, 1.98 million NRIC/FIN number, and 280k UEN registrations.
The association added that more than S$ 50 billion has been being transacted using PayNow since its launch in July 2017, with monthly transaction values crossing $ 5.08 billion in December 2020.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore had first made the announcement that NFIs licensed as a major payment institution under the Payment Services Act will be allowed to connect directly to Fast and Secure Transfers (FAST) and PayNow.
Featured image credit: Edited from Unsplash
