BOT accelerates setting up of new transnational payment system for Thai consumers
The Bank of Thailand (BOT) is pushing the development of a new payment system to match Thailand’s economic recovery.
Siritida Panomwon Na Ayudhya, assistant governor of BOT's Payment Systems Policy and Financial Technology Group, said on Tuesday that the central bank aims to develop a payment system that allows users to perform transactions overseas.
She added that the popular PromptPay application already supports payments in countries like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan via the quick response (QR) code.
She said the volume of transactions via PromptPay has surged exponentially since the application was introduced in January 2017.
"Currently, 44 million transactions are made via PromptPay per month,” she said, adding that the transaction volume is expected to grow further.
Siritida went on to say that BOT joined with the Monetary Authority of Singapore to launch the PromptPay-PayNow system in April 2021. The system allows users to transfer cash to and from Singapore via registered phone numbers.
“As of September last year, 505,000 transactions worth 3.8 billion baht were made via the PromptPay-PayNow system," she said.
She added that BOT is planning to set up a similar system with Malaysia in the third quarter of this year, and with Vietnam after that.
Separately, BOT has cooperated with Hong Kong, China and the United Arab Emirates on issuing a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), Siritida said.
BOT will expand the digital currency to other countries later this year, she added.
“BOT will conduct an experiment on issuing retail CBDC via Thai banks this year," she said.
She added that the central bank is also conducting an experiment on a peer-to-peer (P2P) lending system which allows people to seek loans online.
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