Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) and Liquid Group today announced a strategic partnership to enable cross-border QR payment acceptance in Singapore and Thailand.
With the opening of the Singapore – Thailand corridor for QR payments, SCB will be acting as the sponsoring bank for all Thai banking applications that support cross-border QR payments. Customers will be able to pay for their purchases using their respective Thai QR payment apps at Liquid Group’s participating merchants in Singapore.
One of SCB’s key business operation strategies is to have strong partners to create new capabilities to keep pace with drastic changes in consumer behavior around the world. Partnership with a QR payment service provider such as Liquid Group will help provide more opportunities and better access to real-time and seamless global payment experiences for Thai customers going abroad and foreigners coming to Thailand, said Sopol Chattananant, Siam Commercial Bank WB Future Platform, Global Transaction Banking Services Division First Senior Vice President.
The partnership will allow both players to spearhead cross-border interoperability for QR payments between Thai Mobile Banking Applications and Liquid Group’s network of regional payment apps. As the largest commercial bank in Thailand, SCB has a vast merchant base of approximately 1.0 million acceptance points across the country.
In the initial stage, the service will enable Thai customers going to Singapore to use the SCB Easy Application and mobile banking applications of other banks with a cross-border payment feature to scan QR code for payments at shops located in Singapore’s Changi Airport before expanding to other locations.
In the next stage, the service will allow Singaporean visitors to make payments using QR scanning in Thailand. The Bank is confident that the partnership with Liquid Group will offer a real-time and seamless payment experience through a digital platform to truly meet the requirements of our mutual customers.
Participating merchants in Singapore and Thailand can stand to generate additional revenue from the high volume of frequent travelers commuting between the two countries and their increased purchasing power, which is no longer limited to the amount of cash they carry but linked to the available credit in their wallet drawing from their deposit accounts.