Singapore on track to hit 2025 cheque-free target

Singapore

SINGAPORE's cheque-free target by 2025 came into focus on Tuesday as fresh figures show cheque volumes have been falling annually by 8 per cent over the last three years.

BT understands that this means Singapore is likely on track to meet the target - set by the government last June following the rising adoption of e-payment services.

To add, ATM cash withdrawals relative to card and FAST (fast and secure transfers) payments have also fallen from about 50 per cent to 30 per cent over the same three-year period, said Monetary Authority of Singapore board member and Education Minister Ong Ye Kung on Tuesday, in response to a parliamentary question about cashless transactions in Singapore. "The ratio of cash and cheque usage relative to e-payments has decreased significantly over time," said Mr Ong.

Since the launch of PayNow in July 2017, the peer-to-peer funds transfer service saw 150,000 transactions totalling about S$24 million in the first month of operations.

This volume has swelled to over 5 million transactions in July this year, with total monthly values above S$1 billion, said Mr Ong.

PayNow lets users send payments via their mobile phones without requiring bank account details.

There have been 2.8 million individual PayNow registrations to date, of which 1.8 million are bank accounts linked to mobile phone numbers, with the rest linked to NRIC numbers, said the minister. It is estimated that more than 65 per cent of Singaporeans aged between 20 to 75 have already registered for PayNow.

For PayNow Corporate, more than 115,000 unique entity numbers (UEN) have been registered, representing around 50 per cent of UENs listed to active businesses. This service allows for instant payments between businesses and the government using their respective UENs.

While the take-up for PayNow has been "encouraging", Mr Ong noted that "there is more work to do" to drive the adoption rate of QR code payments in Singapore.

More than 32,000 SGQR code labels - Singapore's single unified QR payment interface - have been deployed across a range of merchants since September 2018, including retail stores, hawker centres and supermarkets. Yet, this only represents a 20 per cent penetration rate of all retail acceptance points nationwide, said Mr Ong.

To encourage cashless payments in hawker centres, unified e-payment terminals - developed by Enterprise Singapore and Nets - have been deployed at small food stalls since December last year.

To date, over 500 stalls across 10 hawker centres, 22 coffee shops and 12 industrial canteens have been equipped with SGQR code labels and unified point-of-sale terminals.

"While the volume of e-payments is still low compared to cash, we expect it to grow," said Mr Ong.

He noted that e-payments usage at these food stalls is gradually increasing; four out of five of such transactions are via SGQR.

"E-payments are convenient to use at hawker stalls, and payment operators are looking into ways to make it even more convenient for hawkers," said Mr Ong.

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