66
Payments Regulation in Asia
APM Case Study: PayNow and Instant Payments PayNow, launched in 2017 for participating banks, enables retail customers of participating banks and non-bank financial institutions to transfer funds and perform domestic retail transactions. Built on the infrastructure of Fast and Secure Transfers (FAST), PayNow operates on a 24/7 settlement basis and is operating across 21 banks and 5 ‘major payment institutions’, which include Xfers, an e-money issuers, and Singtel Dash, a mobile wallet provider. 183 In 2018, the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), the organization operating the PayNow system, launched PayNow Corporate, which allowed corporate customers of participating banks to send business-to-business transactions using the PayNow system. 184 To spur adoption PayNow, ABS announced an incentive scheme in 2020 which aimed to drive more customer and small business adoption under the “Carry on with PayNow” campaign, launched in partnership with the nine PayNow participating banks. As a part of the scheme, all individuals using PayNow were able to win $100 each week for 10 weeks when they make a PayNow transfer to businesses. For small businesses that sign up for PayNow, the first 20,000 to sign up between April to July 2020 received a cash incentive of $25, and those that receive more than 10 payments via PayNow in that period would receive an incentive up to $50. In August 2020, PayNow transactions valued S$3 billion per month. By September 2021, PayNow transactions reached S$7 billion in a month and had 6 million registrants. The growth was drive in part by the government incentives and the cross-border links built between PayNow and PromptPay, Thailand’s real-time payment system. 185
183
https://abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/pay-now#:~:text=PayNow%20Corporate%20enables%20Enti-
ties%20to,other%20entities%20when%20transferring%20funds. 184
https://abs.org.sg/docs/library/paynow-pressrelease_20170710.pdf
185
https://abs.org.sg/docs/library/e-payments-journey-infographics.pdf
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