VocaLink, the UK payment infrastructure provider, and Thailand’s National ITMX (NITMX) are studying a possible collaboration on mobile payments.

The UK provider and NITMX, Thailand’s main interbank payments provider, signed an exclusive letter of intent to identity options for introducing mobile payments in the Asian country.

The UK provider built the real-time technology behind the UK Faster Payments Service, designed to reduce payment times between different banks’ customer accounts from three working days to a few hours.

VocaLink further developed the same real-time technology into its Immediate Payments Solution, which has already been deployed in Singapore.

In addition, the UK provider developed Zapp, an app which enables banks to offer m-commerce and point-of-sale transactions in competition with the likes of Apple Pay. Barclays is expected to be the first UK bank to offer Zapp later this month.

The aim of the collaboration with NITMX is to deliver immediate mobile payments capability to Thai banks, consumers and business. Among the aims is an improvement to m-commerce by reducing dropout rate and fraud.