PayNow users can now easily send thousands of dollars to one another via funds transfer without adding the recipient as a payee.

All of the nine participating PayNow banks will allow ad-hoc transactions of at least S$5,000, the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) said on Monday, Sep. 28.

Previous limit

Without adding the recipient as a payee, PayNow users were previously able to make daily transactions of up to S$1,000 in total.

Widen scope of payments

Raising the limit will allow customers to use PayNow for a wider scope of payments to merchants and friends, ABS said.

No need to add recipient as payee

The higher limit applies to PayNow on internet banking and mobile application without first going through the process of adding the recipient as a payee.

It also applies to scan-and-pay transactions and transfers initiated by entering the NRIC number, mobile number, or Unique Entity Number of the recipient.

Transaction limit

The transaction limit for retail customers has been raised to

- S$5,000 for BOC, ICBC and UOB

- S$10,000 for Citibank and StanChart (with scan-and-pay transactions of up to S$50,000 for StanChart)

- S$200,000 for DBS, HSBC, Maybank and OCBC

For transactions above S$1,000, customers will have to key in their Second Factor Authentication (2FA).

The PayNow limit may also be set to a level that they are comfortable with.

Billions of dollars transferred

As of August, there were more than 4.46 million registered PayNow users.

Collectively, they have transferred nearly S$34 billion, since the service was launched in June 2017.

The nine participating PayNow banks are:

- Bank of China (BOC),

- Citibank,

- DBS,

- HSBC,

- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC),

- Maybank,

- OCBC,

- Standard Chartered,

- United Overseas Bank (UOB)

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