🇸🇬 PayNow – Singapore's Instant Payment System

PayNow is Singapore's national real-time payment system, developed jointly by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS). Launched in July 2017 for individuals and extended to corporates in 2018, PayNow allows Singapore residents and businesses to send and receive funds instantly using a mobile number, NRIC/FIN, or Unique Entity Number (UEN) — without needing to know the recipient's bank account number.

PayNow is built on top of Singapore's FAST (Fast And Secure Transfers) infrastructure, which processes transactions in near real-time, around the clock. Unlike many legacy payment systems, PayNow has no transaction cutoff times: transfers initiated at 3 AM on a public holiday settle just as quickly as those made on a weekday morning. The system is free for personal peer-to-peer transfers below S$1,000 per day at most participating banks.

PayNow QR codes are encoded using the EMV Merchant Presented Mode (MPM) specification, with the application identifier SG.PAYNOW. The standard supports three proxy types for identifying payment recipients:

• Mobile Number — Singapore mobile numbers starting with 8 or 9, formatted as +65XXXXXXXX in the payload. Commonly used for peer-to-peer payments between individuals.
• NRIC/FIN — Singapore National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) for citizens and permanent residents, or Foreign Identification Number (FIN) for long-term pass holders. Format: S/T/F/G + 7 digits + check letter.
• UEN (Unique Entity Number) — Singapore's business registration number assigned by the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA). 9–10 characters, ending with a letter. Used by businesses, charities, government agencies and other legal entities to receive PayNow payments.

A distinctive feature of PayNow QR codes is the “editable amount” flag (field ID 03 in the payload). When set to 1, the payer's banking app will allow them to modify the pre-filled amount before confirming the transfer — useful for situations like shared bills where the exact contribution varies per person. PayNow QR codes also support optional expiry dates, after which the QR code becomes invalid.

PayNow's reach extends well beyond Singapore's borders. MAS has established cross-border payment linkages with:

• PromptPay (Thailand) — The world's first bilateral real-time cross-border payment link, launched in April 2021. Singapore users can transfer SGD to Thai PromptPay recipients, with Bank of Thailand handling the FX conversion.
• UPI (India) — Launched in February 2023, enabling PayNow users to send funds directly to Indian UPI addresses and vice versa, supporting the large Singapore-India remittance corridor.
• DuitNow (Malaysia) — Cross-border QR linkage enabling payments between Singapore and Malaysia, facilitating the high-volume Johor–Singapore economic corridor.

The PayNow ecosystem is supported by all major Singapore banks and financial institutions, including DBS (PayLah!), OCBC (Pay Anyone), UOB (Mighty), Standard Chartered, Citibank, HSBC Singapore, Maybank Singapore, Bank of China Singapore, and CIMB Singapore, as well as e-wallets such as GrabPay and Singtel Dash.

QRPayHub's PayNow generator creates fully compliant EMV payloads with currency code 702 (SGD) and a CRC16-CCITT checksum — computed entirely in your browser, with no server-side processing or data collection.