The Bank of Thailand (BOT) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched on Thursday a linkage of Thailand’s PromptPay and Singapore's PayNow real-time retail payment systems.
Describing it as the first of its kind globally, they said in a statement the linkage followed several years of collaboration between the central banks of both countries, payment system operators, bankers' associations and banks.
Customers of participating banks in Thailand and Singapore will be able to transfer up to S$1,000 or 25,000 baht ($800) daily between the countries, using just a mobile phone number.
The process will not require a user to populate fields such as the recipient's full name and bank account details, as required with a normal remittance.
"This service by the MAS and the BOT will effectively address customers' long standing pain points in the area of cross-border transfers and remittances including long transaction times and high costs," BOT governor Sethaput Suthiwartnarueput said in the joint statement.
Initially, Bangkok Bank Kasikornbank, Krung Thai Bank and Siam Commercial Bank will provide the service in Thailand, according to the BOT.
In Singapore, DBS Bank OCBC and United Overseas Bank will be providers.
Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS, said the shared objective with the BOT was to work with other Asean nations "to expand this bilateral linkage into a network of linked retail payment systems across Asean."