Government hopes Singapore will be cheque-free by 2025
PayNow transfer service to be expanded to include businesses
Singaporeans are adopting online payments with such gusto that the Government hopes that the country will be cheque-free by 2025.
The latest step in the move to e-payments came yesterday with the announcement that the PayNow transfer service will be expanded to include businesses.
PayNow Corporate will start at 8am on Aug 13 and will allow business owners and the Government to link their unique entity numbers to local bank accounts.
This will let them receive payments instantaneously without having to disclose details like the actual account numbers, the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) said yesterday.
Education Minister and Monetary Authority of Singapore board member Ong Ye Kung noted last night that more than eight in 10 Singapore consumers have adopted e-payments while nearly three in five merchants accept e-payments.
The value of e-payments has been growing by more than $10 billion a year.
Meanwhile ATM cash withdrawals have been coming down by more than $300 million a year.
In 2015, ATM cash withdrawals were almost 60 per cent of e-payment transaction value. This was down to about 40 per cent by the end of last year.
"Let us aim to bring this down to 20 per cent in 2020," said Mr Ong, who was speaking at the ABS's 45th annual dinner.
"We don't need to be literally a cashless society - some people will always find cash useful - but we certainly can transact with a lot less cash and we won't need to visit the ATM so often."
The share of cheques as a proportion of all payments using the FAST interbank transfer service, Giro and cheques was about 28 per cent last year, down from 37 per cent in 2015.
"Let us aim to bring that down to 15 per cent in 2020 and become a cheque-free society by 2025. Sweden has done it. We can too," said Mr Ong.
He said there will also be added consumer protection against e-payment risks with a new Payment Services Bill to be introduced later this year.
PayNow - launched last year - lets users sends payments via their mobile phones without needing bank account details. It has around 1.4 million registrations and nearly $900 million has been transferred via the service.
PayNow Corporate will have seven participating banks: Citibank, DBS, HSBC, Maybank, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and UOB.
Mr Ong said: "Government agencies are actively exploring using PayNow for other disbursements."
Mr Rohit Joshi, the head of global liquidity and cash management at HSBC Singapore, said that PayNow " is especially useful for one-off payments like insurance claims and casual labour wages. Remitters don't need to keep track of payee details".
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