Singapore moves to take cross-border payments into the future

SINGAPORE is taking big steps to modernise the cross-border payments scene through a string of recent partnerships, in a bid to ease long-standing payment pains.

It comes with a world first in cross-border payments for consumers. Singapore and Thailand have linked both countries' real-time retail payment rails, to make cross-border money transfers faster and cheaper.

The linkage of Singapore's PayNow and Thailand's PromptPay is the first instant cross-border payments infrastructure to be set up globally, tackling key pain points such as high fees and long transaction times as with typical international remittances.