Singapore is moving closer to becoming a more familiar payment environment for Indian travellers as FOMO Pay and NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL) expand UPI acceptance among local merchants. Announced at Global Fintech Fest 2026, the partnership enables Singapore businesses to accept UPI QR payments while receiving settlement in Singapore dollars, with Resorts World Sentosa among the first merchant partners.

India’s Unified Payments Interface is increasingly becoming a cross-border payment network rather than a domestic-only banking rail.

That shift is taking another step in Singapore, where payment institution FOMO Pay and NPCI International Payments Limited (NIPL), the international arm of India’s National Payments Corporation of India, have announced a strategic partnership to expand UPI QR acceptance for merchants.

The agreement, announced at Global Fintech Fest 2026, is initially gaining visibility through Resorts World Sentosa (RWS). Indian visitors can use their existing UPI-enabled banking and payment applications to make payments on the resort’s website, while participating Singapore merchants receive settlement in Singapore dollars.

For consumers, the significance is straightforward: they do not need to adopt an unfamiliar local payment application simply to make a purchase before or during a Singapore trip.

For merchants, the proposition is more about interoperability.

The payment flow connects India’s domestic real-time payment ecosystem with Singapore’s merchant infrastructure while handling the currency conversion between Indian rupees and Singapore dollars.

That makes the partnership part of a larger trend in cross-border digital payments: instead of forcing travellers onto separate payment ecosystems, payment networks are increasingly building bridges between systems that already have large domestic user bases.

UPI is one of the largest examples of that model.

According to the announcement, UPI now handles more than 24 billion transactions per month and has more than 550 million active users. Its scale gives international payment partners a substantial installed consumer base to connect with overseas merchants.

NIPL was created specifically to take that infrastructure beyond India, and Singapore is an important market for that strategy.

The India-Singapore corridor has strong commercial and tourism links. Singapore Tourism Board data shows that the city-state received 1.2 million Indian visitors in 2025, making India its fifth-largest source market.

That visitor volume gives merchants a practical reason to support familiar Indian payment methods.

Resorts World Sentosa is a useful example because the transaction can happen before the traveller even leaves India. Indian customers can use UPI through the RWS website to book participating experiences, creating a payment journey that starts in the traveller’s home market and settles into Singapore’s financial system.

The resort includes Universal Studios Singapore, Singapore Oceanarium, Adventure Cove Waterpark, hotels, restaurants and retail operations, giving the partnership exposure across several categories of consumer spending.

The broader opportunity, however, extends well beyond tourism.

Singapore has long positioned itself as a financial and payments hub, while India has built one of the world’s largest real-time retail payment ecosystems. Connecting those systems could create infrastructure for a broader India-Singapore digital commerce corridor, particularly as businesses seek easier ways to serve consumers who increasingly expect real-time payments across borders.

FOMO Pay’s role is important in that architecture.

Rather than operating as a consumer-facing payment application, the Singapore-headquartered payment institution provides payment infrastructure that can connect merchants to multiple payment rails and currencies. Its involvement gives local businesses a mechanism for accepting UPI without necessarily rebuilding their existing payment stack around India’s banking ecosystem.

That distinction matters for international payments.

Cross-border transactions have traditionally involved several layers, including payment networks, acquiring institutions, foreign exchange providers and settlement systems. Each additional layer can introduce costs, processing delays or reconciliation complexity.

Payment orchestration platforms are attempting to abstract some of that complexity by connecting multiple rails behind a common merchant interface.

The FOMO Pay-NIPL partnership fits that model. UPI remains the consumer-facing rail, while the merchant can receive funds in local currency.

It is also a reflection of how national real-time payment systems are evolving.

India is not alone in developing an instant-payment infrastructure with international ambitions. Singapore’s PayNow, Brazil’s Pix, Europe’s instant-payment initiatives and other domestic systems are increasingly becoming building blocks for cross-border interoperability.

The long-term goal is not necessarily to create one global payment network. Instead, it is to make separate national systems capable of communicating with each other.

For fintech companies, that creates a new infrastructure opportunity.

Merchants want access to international consumers without managing dozens of payment integrations. Consumers want to use trusted applications and familiar authentication methods. Banks and payment institutions need settlement, compliance, foreign-exchange and reconciliation mechanisms that work across jurisdictions.

The companies that can connect those pieces become increasingly important in the global payments infrastructure stack.

There are still constraints.

Payment interoperability does not eliminate regulatory requirements, foreign-exchange considerations or merchant onboarding obligations. Availability can also differ by merchant, payment channel and applicable local regulations. International payment networks must maintain strong fraud controls and compliance processes as transaction volumes increase.

For UPI specifically, expanding overseas acceptance also means moving from a massive domestic ecosystem into markets with different acquiring structures and regulatory frameworks.

That makes partnerships such as FOMO Pay’s strategically relevant.

The announcement demonstrates a model in which international expansion can happen through local payment infrastructure rather than requiring merchants to adopt India’s domestic financial architecture wholesale.

For Singapore businesses, the commercial argument is equally direct: accepting a payment method already used by hundreds of millions of Indian consumers can reduce friction for an important visitor segment.

For Indian travellers, the benefit is familiarity.

And for the fintech industry, the bigger story is the continued transformation of real-time payment systems into interoperable cross-border networks.

UPI’s international expansion is therefore becoming less about exporting a QR code and more about building connections between domestic financial infrastructures.

If that model continues to scale, partnerships between payment institutions, national payment networks and large merchant ecosystems could become a defining layer of the next generation of cross-border commerce.

Market Landscape

The global payments industry is shifting from isolated national payment systems toward greater interoperability. UPI, Singapore’s PayNow, Brazil’s Pix and other instant-payment networks are increasingly being connected through bilateral or multi-party arrangements.

The opportunity is substantial because consumers already have trusted domestic payment applications. Rather than asking travellers to change behaviour abroad, cross-border infrastructure can connect those existing payment relationships to overseas merchants.

Singapore is particularly relevant because of its role as a financial and tourism hub, while India’s enormous real-time payment user base provides merchants with a compelling international customer segment.

The competitive landscape includes traditional card networks, mobile wallets, bank-led payment systems, QR payment schemes and fintech payment-orchestration platforms. The differentiator increasingly becomes the ability to combine consumer familiarity, merchant acceptance, local settlement and regulatory compliance.

Top Insights

• UPI is expanding beyond India, with FOMO Pay helping connect Singapore merchants to India’s massive real-time payment ecosystem.
• Indian travellers can pay through familiar UPI applications, while Singapore merchants receive settlement in Singapore dollars.
• Resorts World Sentosa is an early merchant partner, allowing Indian visitors to book participating experiences through its website using UPI.
• Singapore’s Indian tourism market creates strong demand, with 1.2 million Indian visitors recorded in 2025, according to Singapore Tourism Board data.
• Payment interoperability is becoming infrastructure, connecting domestic real-time payment networks instead of forcing consumers onto unfamiliar international payment methods.

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