PayNow

PayNow is a funds transfer service in Singapore that allows customers of participating banks and payment firms to send and receive Singapore dollars almost instantly, at any time, using a simple identifier in place of a bank account number. The identifier, called a proxy, can be a mobile phone number, a national identity number or, for organisations, a business registration number. PayNow was launched in July 2017 by the Association of Banks in Singapore.

PayNow is not a separate payment rail. It is an addressing layer that sits on top of FAST (Fast and Secure Transfers), the interbank instant payment system that Singapore's banks have operated since 2014. FAST moves the money between accounts; PayNow looks up which account a proxy points to. The service is the main form of account-to-account payment between individuals in Singapore and is widely used by businesses and government.

A customer registers a proxy through their bank's app, linking, for example, their mobile number to one of their accounts. The link is stored in a central addressing database run for the industry by the national clearing operator. Each proxy can point to only one account at a time.

To pay, the sender enters the recipient's proxy in their own banking app. The app queries the database and displays the registered name of the account holder, so the sender can confirm the right person before approving. The payment then travels over FAST as a push payment and is credited to the recipient within seconds. Transfers are generally free for individuals, and are subject to the FAST transaction limit and to daily limits the customer sets with their bank.

In 2018 the service was extended to businesses, charities and government agencies as PayNow Corporate. An organisation registers its Unique Entity Number, optionally with a suffix to distinguish departments or collection accounts. Customers and other businesses pay to that number, and the government uses the service to make payments such as tax refunds and support payouts to citizens who have linked their identity numbers.

Organisations usually present their proxy as a QR code. Singapore's common QR specification, SGQR, combines PayNow with card and wallet schemes in a single label, so a merchant displays one code for all. A static QR identifies only the payee, while a dynamic QR also carries the amount and a payment reference, which lets billers reconcile receipts automatically. This has made the QR payment by bank transfer a common alternative to cards at small merchants and on invoices.

The service began with a group of the largest retail banks and has since added further banks. In 2021 the Monetary Authority of Singapore opened direct access to FAST and PayNow to eligible non-bank financial institutions licensed as a major payment institution. Their e-wallet users can register a proxy and exchange funds with bank accounts and other wallets in real time, which ended the earlier separation between wallet balances and the banking system.

PayNow has been connected to the instant payment systems of several other countries so that people can send small sums abroad using only a phone number. The link with Thailand's PromptPay, launched in April 2021, was the first of its kind between two national real-time retail payment systems. Links followed with India's Unified Payments Interface in February 2023 and with Malaysia's DuitNow later that year.

In each case a sender in one country enters the recipient's proxy in the other, sees the exchange rate and the recipient's name, and the money arrives within minutes, with designated banks handling settlement between the two systems. Daily limits are low, in keeping with the purpose of personal remittances. These bilateral links are frequently cited as working examples of the instant cross-border payment, and they informed a Bank for International Settlements project to connect several countries' systems through a common platform instead of one pair at a time.

PayNow is an industry scheme governed through the Association of Banks in Singapore, with the underlying clearing and addressing infrastructure operated by the national clearing company. The Monetary Authority of Singapore oversees it as part of its responsibility for the country's payment systems and has driven its expansion as a matter of policy, including the opening to non-banks and the overseas links. It is the Singapore example among the real-time payment systems that many countries have introduced.

Speed and finality make the service attractive to scammers. Victims are persuaded to transfer money themselves, a form of authorized push payment fraud, or lose control of their banking app to malware or phishing. Recovery is difficult because funds are moved onward within minutes.

Banks and the regulator have responded with layered controls: display of the payee's name before payment, lower default transfer limits, cooling-off periods after a new device or payee is added, a self-service function to freeze all accounts at once, and real-time fraud surveillance. A framework introduced by the authorities in 2024 sets out duties for banks and telecommunications operators in relation to phishing scams and makes them bear losses where they fail to meet those duties.

• Association of Banks in Singapore: PayNow
• Monetary Authority of Singapore