The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) announced Thursday they will be exploring four areas of enhancements to Singapore’s national instant payments infrastructure as part of a PayNow Generation 2 (PayNow Gen2) study.
The potential enhancements to PayNow will better serve the needs of consumers, merchants, businesses and public agencies, and make Singapore’s national payments infrastructure more seamless, efficient and accessible to users, MAS said in a statement.
There are four possible areas of enhancement, identified through consultations with 37 organizations and benchmarking against 11 jurisdictions.
Firstly, improving QR interoperability between PayNow and NETS QR, so that consumers can scan and pay at any merchant regardless of which payment scheme[3] they are on. MAS and ABS aim to pilot this by end-2026.
Secondly, enhancing the online checkout experience for consumers through deep-linking within PayNow QR codes.
This reduces payment steps[4], making online payments smoother for consumers, and resulting in fewer lost sales for online merchants. MAS and ABS will look to have this ready within a year.
Thirdly, enabling larger-value public-sector PayNow transactions for government agencies through a sandboxed pilot with appropriate transaction limits and safeguards.
This will also make it more convenient for consumers and businesses when making such larger-value payments to government agencies. MAS and ABS will commence the sandbox with government agencies next year, with appropriate safeguards in place.
Fourthly, expanded payment capabilities for emerging business needs, such as request-to-pay; structured data fields for automated reconciliation; a micro-payments rail; expanded cross-border connectivity; enhanced resilience to payment operations, such as through offline payment capabilities; and new functionalities to facilitate agentic commerce.
These capabilities are longer-term in nature; MAS and ABS will commence foundational work this year.
The findings for Phase 1 are set out in “PayNow Generation 2: Defining the Next Wave of Innovation for Singapore’s Instant Payments System “.
The next phase of work will see MAS and ABS partner industry participants to translate these insights and initiatives into detailed implementation steps, including developing pilots for selected enhancements.
MAS and ABS will also publish an implementation roadmap by end-2026, said the statement.
Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister and Ministry for Trade and Industry, and Chairman of the MAS, said during his speech that Singapore will enhance its instant payments infrastructure under “PayNow Generation 2” to make the system more seamless, interoperable and future-ready.
“PayNow Generation 2 is about ensuring Singapore’s national payment schemes and rails are fit for purpose and ready for the future,” he said.
According to him, MAS, ABS and industry partners will work together to expand PayNow’s capabilities, including interoperability between payment networks.
“We will pilot inter-operability between them, so that consumers can scan and pay at any merchant regardless of which scheme the merchant uses,” he noted.
The initiative will also improve the digital checkout experience through QR deep-linking, reducing the number of steps required to complete payments.
MAS and industry players will also additionally explore new features such as request-to-pay and structured data capabilities to support automated reconciliation and reduce manual processing for businesses.
The government will also work with agencies to sandbox the use of PayNow for larger-value public sector transactions, he added.
“We will nevertheless commence foundational work this year, so that our payments infrastructure is ready for the way commerce will work in the future,” Gan said.
Singapore establishes Future of Finance Institute to scale financial innovation