Over the past few months, the payments industry in Singapore has seen quite some innovation: Interbank transfers between accounts are now easier with the whole new FAST system which was implemented back in March. In May, OCBC has also enabled payments through Facebook account.
If that’s not enough, here’s another big leap forward for the payments industry in Singapore: banks are now actively pushing for mobile payments through apps.
DBS Bank, one of Singapore’s main banks, has launched its whole new mobile wallet application, DBS PayLah! on May 29th. The app allows DBS and POSB customers to use their mobile phones to pay for purchases, send and receive funds without having to log into the typical online banking system.
How does it work? Once you download the app, you can link your mobile numbers with your existing DBS and POSB bank accounts. You can then top up the mobile wallet, which can take a maximum of S$999. Once done, you can use the application for transactions such as sending money to one another and even paying for taxi fares.
“We have received more than 5,000 sign-ups for DBS PayLah! within a week of making the app available. This signals consumers’ readiness to adopt mobile payment,” said Mr Louis Foo, Senior Vice-President of Consumer Banking Group eBusiness at DBS Bank Singapore.
Following the launch of the DBS mobile app, Singapore’s main telco SingTel has joined forces with Standard Chartered (StanChart) to launch a similar mobile payments app called Dash. The app allows customers to pay friends and merchants with funds stored on their phone.
By end of the year, users can use Dash to make payments at around 20,000 acceptance points in Singapore, including retail outlets, convenience stores and taxis.
“Presently, we’ve in excess of 20 to 30 merchants, and we’ll continue to increase that number with time. We believe we have enough merchants today to create a critical mass and anchor the product, but we’ll always continue to bring on new merchants,” Mr Allen Lew, CEO of Group Digital L!fe at SingTel said.
So don’t be surprised when you start seeing people using their mobile phones to pay for their purchases. In fact, it is already happening now.
