In a move to increase efficiency in payment systems, the Bank of Thailand (BoT) will establish a quick response (QR) cross-border payment linkage scheme with India in the third quarter of this year; and, it points out, has plans to integrate the scheme into a multinational payment network with other Asian economies. 

The central bank, it notes, already has QR cross-border payment links with Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Laos. 

All of Thailand’s cross-border transactions are facilitated by PromptPay, Thailand’s national electronic payment platform, which is linked to a user’s citizen ID or mobile phone number.  Under PromptPay, users pay little to no fees for payment transfers using a QR code. 

In addition to QR payments, the linkage between Thailand and Singapore, which has been in place since 2021, also allows for remittances. 

PromptPay, launched in 2016, experienced a surge in usership during the pandemic. As of December 2023, 77.6 million users have signed up to the service, according to BoT, and there have been an average of 54.5 million financial transactions via PromptPay per day, worth 130 billion baht (US$3.5 billion).