Come next year, DBS Bank and OCBC Bank customers will be able to make PayNow payments to around 80,000 local merchants with Google Pay.
Customers’ bank accounts will be linked to the Google Pay app, and payments will be “directly debited”.
This also means that customers will be able to use Google Pay even if they do not have credit cards.
The partnership between PayNow and Google Pay was announced yesterday at the Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF), and both banks mentioned that “the service will be tested in trials early next year with the aim of rolling it out in full later in the year”.
Said Mr Ching Wei Hong, Chief Operating Officer at OCBC Bank on the partnership: “When it launches here, Google Pay will offer our customers a unique proposition for making payments that is frictionless and requires no extra hoops for customers to jump through to access their bank account funds.”
Added Mr Caesar Sengupta, Vice President of Payments and the Next Billion Users initiatives at Google: “The first PayNow transaction we tested on Google Pay was $8.88 – a success of our close partnership. OCBC has proven to be a valuable partner providing us with insights and expertise on payments, leveraging the national payment rails in Singapore.”
OCBC Bank customers who are interested in being part of the open-beta of Google Pay in Singapore in Jan 2020 would be able to sign up for it at the OCBC Bank booth at the Singapore FinTech Festival.