SUMMARY
This collaboration builds upon the existing Unified Payments Interface (UPI) linkage between India and Singapore
As part of the partnership, STB and PhonePe will both invest in joint marketing efforts across India and Singapore
The NPCI has also inked agreements with multiple countries, including Nepal, France, Sri Lanka, and UAE to take UPI global apart from Singapore
The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and fintech major PhonePe have entered into a two-year strategic partnership to promote UPI payments for Indian visitors in Singapore.
Indian travellers can now use the PhonePe app across 8,000+ merchants in Singapore.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on Wednesday (April 3) between STB’s chief executive, Melissa Ow, and Ritesh Pai, chief executive officer, International Payments Business for PhonePe.
This collaboration builds upon the existing UPI linkage between India and Singapore, which allows customers to instantly make cross-border transactions between the two countries directly from their existing Indian bank accounts, PhonePe said in a statement.
As part of the partnership, STB and PhonePe will both invest in joint marketing efforts across India and Singapore.
Walmart-owned PhonePe currently claims 520+ Mn registered users and a digital payments acceptance network of 38 Mn merchants. It also processes 230+ Mn daily transactions with an annualised Total Payment Value (TPV) of $1.5+ Tn.
Since its launch in 2016, the PhonePe Group has expanded into financial services (Insurance, Lending, Wealth) as well as new consumer tech businesses (Pincode – hyperlocal e-commerce and Indus App Store – India’s first localised App Store).
In February 2023, PhonePe also launched support for cross-border UPI payments, under UPI International. This allowed users to make payments in foreign currencies directly from their bank accounts, similar to international debit cards.
Introduced by the cross-border arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI International Payments Limited), UPI International facilitates UPI transactions for the Indian diaspora abroad. The NPCI has also inked agreements with multiple countries, including Nepal, France, Sri Lanka, UAE to take UPI global apart from Singapore
In India, the transactions on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) rose 11% month-on-month (MoM) to 13.44 Bn in March 2024 from 12.10 Bn. On a year-on-year (YoY) basis, the transaction count surged 55% from 8.7 Bn.
As per the National Payments Corporation of India’s (NPCI’s) data, the transaction volume in March stood at INR 19.78 Lakh Cr, up 8% from February’s INR 18.28 Lakh Cr. It also zoomed 40% from INR 14.1 Lakh Cr in the year-ago month.
The NPCI as well as the government have taken a number of steps to promote UPI. The NPCI continues to add new features and launch new services to further increase the adoption of UPI. It has launched innovations like UPI Lite, credit lines on UPI, UPI LITE X and Tap & Pay, Hello! UPI, and BillPay Connect, among others, over the years.
As of now, it is eyeing the introduction of a new service to enable an interoperable payment system for net banking through NPCI Bharat Billpay (NBBL). The system will facilitate quicker settlement of funds for merchants. With banks and fintech firms planning to get onboard, the NBBL is likely to enable such transactions in April.
