The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Association of Banks in Singapore have jointly published the Phase 1 report of the PayNow Generation 2 initiative, charting a clear path to evolve the nation’s flagship instant payments platform. Released on 25 June 2026, the document reviews PayNow’s impressive achievements since its 2017 debut while pinpointing targeted upgrades designed to meet changing user demands and align with international best practices.
Since its launch, PayNow has grown into an essential part of Singapore’s digital economy. By the end of 2025, the system had secured roughly 11 million proxy registrations, reaching over 90 percent of the adult population and approximately 350,000 business entities.
During 2025, it facilitated around SGD 154 billion in consumer payments and SGD 147 billion in business payments, in addition to SGD 371 million in cross-border transfers via connections with India’s UPI, Malaysia’s DuitNow, and Thailand’s PromptPay.
Backed by 23 banks and six major payment service providers, the platform delivers free person-to-person transfers with immediate settlement through the FAST infrastructure, providing a faster and more affordable alternative to traditional card payments.
Although PayNow has performed strongly, the Phase 1 study—supported by benchmarking of 11 global instant payment systems and consultations with 37 industry stakeholders—revealed scope to minimize remaining frictions and enable fresh applications.
The analysis identified five major global trends shaping the future of payments: heightened demand for effortless convenience, the emergence of agentic commerce, the growth of programmable money, rising focus on trust and security, and the increasing integration of payments directly into software platforms and everyday workflows.
Building on these insights, the report recommends advancing four priority areas in a coordinated manner. First, efforts will focus on improving QR code interoperability.
A pilot project scheduled for the end of 2026 aims to let users of PayNow-enabled applications scan and pay at merchants displaying NETS QR codes, and vice versa.
This change would create a unified experience across schemes, simplifying transactions for both local residents and international visitors while broadening merchant acceptance. Second, the initiative targets a more seamless online purchasing process.
Within the next year, deep-linking features will be introduced so that scanning a PayNow QR code or clicking a payment link automatically opens the user’s chosen banking or wallet application with all necessary details already populated.
This approach is expected to cut down on manual steps, lower abandonment rates, and boost completion rates for e-commerce merchants.
Third, plans are underway to support larger-value transactions in the public sector.
Starting next year, a controlled sandbox environment will allow selected government agencies to accept and process higher-value PayNow payments, subject to strengthened safeguards such as approved participant lists and additional verification steps.
This development would extend the benefits of instant, low-cost transfers to significant government collections and disbursements. Fourth, the study lays groundwork for expanded business-oriented capabilities.
Work commencing this year will explore features such as request-to-pay mechanisms, richer structured data for automatic reconciliation, support for micropayments, stronger cross-border options, offline functionality where needed, and tools suited to emerging models like agentic commerce.
These enhancements seek to integrate payments more deeply into corporate systems and daily operations.
Phase 2 of the Gen2 study will now engage industry partners to test these proposals through practical demonstrations, evaluate their impact on user experience, security, and costs, and produce a comprehensive implementation plan by the close of 2026.
The PayNow Generation 2 effort reflects Singapore’s ongoing dedication to refining a secure, efficient, and forward-looking payments ecosystem. These planned improvements are positioned to drive wider adoption, reduce operational frictions, and reinforce the country’s competitive edge in digital finance across consumer, business, and public sectors.