Interested in exploring collaboration with Indian IT, fintech sector: Singapore Trade Minister

The Trade Minister is in Delhi for the launch event of the 3rd edition of the Singapore-India Hackathon (SIH) 2023

Calling India a strong leader in IT and fintech sector, Minister of Trade and Industry Singapore Gan Kim Yong said that Singapore is interested to explore opportunities and collaborate together in this sector with India. He made this comment after the recent cross-border real-time payment systems linkage of India's UPI and Singapore's PayNow linkage between the two countries.

In what is a first-of-its-kind collaboration with another country, India and Singapore last month linked their respective online payments systems — Unified Payments Interface (UPI) of India and PayNow of Singapore — for seamless cross-border transactions between the two countries.

The linkage of these two payment systems of both countries would enable residents of both countries to the faster and more cost-efficient transfer of cross-border remittances. People in both countries will be able to send money in real-time via QR-code based or simply by entering mobile numbers linked to the bank account.

"India has a very strong leadership, knowledge, skills, and innovation in IT and in Fintech as well. This is an area where we are very interested to explore opportunities and collaborate together. UPI and PayNow system, a great venture that we embarked together and this I hope will be the start of many partnerships with other countries as Singapore and India can lead the way in the integration of the payment system", said the Minister in an interview to ANI.

The cross-border real-time payment systems linkage between Singapore and India was launched earlier in virtual presence of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das, and Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing ecosystems for fintech innovation and the PM Modi-led Government has been instrumental in driving the globalisation of India's digital payment infrastructure.

Calling the linkage as an important development, Mr. Yong added that his country is also looking for collaboration in areas like Education, Sustainability and Skill degradation. ”This was streamlined between two countries and this is a very important development in the fintech industry. We certainly look forward to more opportunities to collaborate in Fintech as well as many other areas of interest in Education, skill upgrading, in sustainability and these are all opportunities that are emerging and we are looking forward to our partnership with India”, he said.