- Major authorities in both nations announce plans to work together
- Private sector partnerships between two major firms also announced
- “These four agreements will help to further deepen the growing connectivity between the financial sectors”, says MAS director
Two major Asian economic powerhouses have announced that they plan to work together on payment technology research.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore, known as MAS, and the People’s Bank of China will engage in a joint programme of research into mobile and digitalised payments, as well as distributed ledger technology, data programming and more.
The announcement, which is likely to make it easier to transfer money internationally, came as the Chinese premier visited Singapore to attend the 33rd ASEAN Summit and other meetings. The round of summits ends today.
The fintech research development comes as the Singaporean electronic payment system NETS, or the Network for Electronic Transfers, announced that it would work alongside Chinese firm UnionPay.
As a result of the pairing, users of NETSPay will now be able to access 10 million UnionPay points around the world, meaning it will probably appear more favourably in a money transfer comparison.
The memorandum of understanding between the two firms was described as a “first” by senior officials.
“This week’s signing of agreements between the financial regulators of China and Singapore bears testimony yet again to the growing strength of financial cooperation between our two countries”, said Ravi Menon, MAS’s Managing Director.
“We are particularly pleased with the private sector MOUs, which represent ‘firsts’ in their respective areas.”
“The NETS-UPI tie up will allow a larger number of travellers between the two countries to make payments in each other’s markets. These four agreements will help to further deepen the growing connectivity between the financial sectors of China and Singapore”, he added.
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