Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know
Non-bank companies Grab Financial Group, Liquid Group and Singtel’s Dash will offer e-payment platform PayNow from 8 February, according to the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS).
This marks the first time that non-bank e-wallet users will be able to make or receive real-time money transfer with PayNow.
A new proxy called virtual payment address (VPA) has been created and used for money transfer between bank accounts and e-wallets and across e-wallets.
VPA allows individuals to link their mobile number with an e-wallet that offered by non-bank financial institutions while keeping their PayNow registration that links to a bank account.
Non-bank e-wallet users will progressively be able to make payments to merchants by scanning their PayNow SGQR labels.
It is the first time PayNow has been made available to non-banks, it said.
Mark Tan of Pinsent Masons MPillay, the Singapore joint law venture between MPillay and Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law, said: ”This is the first instance of PayNow being extended to non-bank financial institutions, and appears to be part of an ongoing initiative to further accelerate the widespread adoption of instantaneous real-time digital payments here in Singapore.”
“Additionally, this is also likely to have the effect of evening out the playing field for non-bank financial institutions who meet the required standards to gain access to the PayNow, and to have the effect of encouraging greater competition in this area, which will in turn likely result in consumers having more choices in this regard as well, ” he said.
There have been 12 PayNow participating institutions up to now.
From February 2021 non-banks as major payment institutions under the Payment Services Act, will be able to connect directly to FAST and PayNow.
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