PromptPay-PayNow

Overview

The PromptPay–PayNow Linkage is a bilateral connection between Thailand's PromptPay and Singapore's PayNow real-time retail payment systems that lets customers of participating banks send cross-border transfers to each other using only the recipient's registered mobile phone number, without supplying a bank account number or full name. Launched on 29 April 2021 by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT), it is widely described as the world's first linkage of two countries' real-time (faster) payment systems [1]1 [3]3. It is a flagship deliverable under the broader ASEAN Payment Connectivity initiative begun in 2019 [1]1.

History

PromptPay is Thailand's national instant payment scheme, launched in 2016 and operated by National ITMX under the oversight of the Bank of Thailand; it lets users transfer funds addressed by mobile phone number, citizen identification number, or bank account number [3]3. PayNow is Singapore's equivalent peer-to-peer instant transfer service, operated under the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), addressed by mobile number, NRIC/FIN, or business UEN.

MAS and BOT, together with the two systems' operators — NETS Group (Singapore) and National ITMX (Thailand) — their bankers' associations, and participating banks, launched the cross-border linkage on 29 April 2021 after several years of collaboration [1]1. The project is positioned as a concrete step under ASEAN Payment Connectivity (initiated 2019) and aligned with G20 and Financial Stability Board goals for faster, cheaper, more inclusive and transparent cross-border payments [1]1.

Technical specification

• Addressing by mobile number. A sender enters only the recipient's mobile phone number (registered with PromptPay or PayNow); the recipient's full name and bank account details do not need to be populated, unlike conventional remittance [1]1.
• Transfer limits. At launch the service catered for small-value person-to-person transactions of up to S$1,000 or THB 25,000 per day [1]1. The S$1,000 cap is applied per user per day, shared across a bank's apps [6]6.
• Foreign exchange. Conversion uses applicable foreign-exchange rates disclosed to the customer; the service is positioned as a low-cost alternative to traditional remittance [1]1.
• Speed and availability. Transfers are near real-time and available 24/7 between customers of participating banks [2]2.

Use cases

• Person-to-person remittances between Thailand and Singapore (e.g., the large Thai worker community in Singapore sending money home) [4]4.
• Tourist and traveller transfers using a mobile number rather than account details [1]1.
• A reference template for subsequent bilateral and multilateral faster-payment linkages across ASEAN [2]2.

Implementations

• Singapore side (launch): DBS, OCBC and UOB [6]6.
• Thailand side (launch): Bangkok Bank (BBL), Kasikornbank (KBank), Krung Thai Bank (KTB) and Siam Commercial Bank (SCB); Bank of Ayudhya (Krungsri) was subsequently added, bringing the Thai roster toward five banks [6]6.
• Consumer access is through participating banks' apps — e.g. DBS/POSB digibank and iWealth in Singapore [6]6.

Comparison

The PromptPay–PayNow linkage is the bilateral template that later faster-payment linkages followed. Whereas this scheme connects two account-to-account real-time transfer systems via mobile-number addressing, the parallel ASEAN cross-border QR linkages (e.g. PromptPay–DuitNow, PayNow–QRIS) connect merchant QR acceptance networks. The Regional Payment Connectivity (RPC) framework, signed by ASEAN central banks in 2022–2023, generalised these one-to-one links toward a multilateral mesh covering KHQR, QRIS, Lao QR, DuitNow, QR Ph, PayNow, PromptPay and VietQR [7]7. Both BOT and MAS have stated intentions to add participating banks and raise the daily transfer limits to support business (not just P2P) transactions [2]2 [6]6.

Fun facts

• It is repeatedly cited as the world's first linkage of two real-time/faster payment systems, predating other bilateral fast-payment links [1]1 [3]3.
• A sender needs nothing more than the recipient's mobile number — the linkage strips away the account-number-and-name friction of legacy cross-border remittance [1]1.

Status

Live since 29 April 2021 [1]1. The link remains the foundational ASEAN bilateral fast-payment connection and has been folded into the broader Regional Payment Connectivity programme; both central banks continue to signal planned expansion of participating banks and higher limits for business use [2]2 [6]6.

Sources

1 Singapore and Thailand Launch World's First Linkage of Real-time Payment Systems — Monetary Authority of Singapore, 2021 2 Cross-border Payment Linkages — Bank of Thailand 3 PromptPay — Wikipedia 4 Thailand — Banking QR/Barcode Standards Report — Barcoder corpus, 2025 5 Singapore — Banking QR/Barcode Standards Report — Barcoder corpus, 2025 6 PayNow-PromptPay Linkage — Fact Sheet — Association of Banks in Singapore, 2023 7 Launch of Cross-border QR Payments Linkage between Indonesia and Singapore — Monetary Authority of Singapore, 2023

Deployments

Found in the following country reports (grep across reports/countries/):

• TH — TH-thailand.md

Regions / aggregations not mapped to a single country

• Thailand–Singapore