Adoption Rate of Cashless Transactions in Singapore

5 Mr Ang Wei Neng asked the Prime Minister (a) what is the current adoption rate of PayNow and PayNow Corporate; (b) whether the adoption rate has met the Government's target; (c) what is the current adoption rate of QR code payment in Singapore, especially at hawker centres; and (d) what is the plan to further push the adoption rate of cashless transactions in Singapore.

The Minister for Education (Mr Ong Ye Kung) (for the Prime Minister): Since the launch of PayNow in July 2017 and PayNow Corporate in August 2018, take-up has been encouraging.

There have been 2.8 million individual registrations for PayNow, of which 1.8 million are bank accounts linked to mobile phone numbers and the remainder are linked to NRIC numbers. We estimate that more than 65% of Singaporeans aged between 20 and 75 years old have already registered for PayNow, and the numbers are still increasing.

As for PayNow Corporate, over 115,000 unique entity numbers (UENs) have been registered. This represents approximately half of the total number of UENs issued to active businesses. The numbers are also on an upward trend.

Two years ago, when PayNow was launched, there were about 150,000 transactions totaling about S$24 million in the first month of operations. In July this year, those volumes had increased to over five million transactions, with total values over S$1 billion per month.

Mr Ang also asked about the adoption of QR code payments. QR codes are a low cost and effective way for merchants to receive e-payments from their customers. In September 2018, we collaborated with the industry to launch SGQR, our national QR code that consolidated the various QRs of international and domestic payment schemes into a single unified interface. Since then, over 32,000 SGQR codes have been deployed across a range of merchants including hawker centres, retail stores, F&B outlets, supermarkets and healthcare outlets. This represents a penetration rate of about 20% of all retail acceptance points – so, there is a lot more work to do.

Specifically, on hawker centres, Enterprise Singapore has collaborated with NETS to deploy a unified e-payment solution at small food businesses since December 2018. To date, SGQR labels and unified point-of-sale terminals have been deployed at over 500 stalls spread across 10 hawker centres, 22 coffeeshops, and 12 industrial canteens. E-payments usage at these stalls is gradually increasing and four out of five e-payment transactions are via SGQR. While the volume of e-payments is still low compared to cash, we expect it to grow. E-payments are convenient to use at hawker stalls and payment operators are looking into ways to make it even more convenient for hawkers.

Let me take the opportunity to reiterate our approach to promoting e-payments in Singapore. We made a deliberate decision not to have one player dominate the landscape and roll out very quickly, where you end up dominating and monopolising the landscape. Instead, we put in place the backbone infrastructure, so that multiple providers can compete and innovate to increase consumer choice, while encouraging inter-operability.

As a result, Singaporeans can now make e-payments in multiple ways which are simple, swift and secure. Singaporeans are making more contactless payments using credit and debit cards, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. They can use QR payments via e-wallets and also use PayNow. As a result, the ratio of cash and cheque usage relative to e-payments has decreased significantly over time. Cheque volumes have been reducing by 8% per year over the last three years and ATM cash withdrawals relative to card and FAST payments have fallen from about 50% three years ago to 30% over the same period.

We will continue to enhance the e-payments infrastructure for Singaporeans from all walks to experience convenient and low-cost e-payments.

Mr Ang Wei Neng (Jurong): Mr Speaker, I thank the Minister for the very comprehensive reply. We note that PayNow is more popular amongst individuals as compared to the corporates and companies, as per the figures given by the Minister. So, would the Minister consider asking the banks to promote PayNow Corporate more before they start changing the charges for the cheques? Some local banks now charge 75 cents per cheque right from the first cheque instead of the first 30 cheques for free previously. This could be a bit premature because a lot of companies, like the Minister said, half the companies, are still not using PayNow Corporate.

Mr Ong Ye Kung: For PayNow Corporate, the take-up is not so bad – as I mentioned earlier, it is now half of the UENs – considering that it was launched only August 2018, a year ago. The take-up is fast and you see a corresponding drop in the use of cheques. So, I agree with the Member that MAS should encourage banks, and banks should also take the initiative to promote PayNow Corporate, but at the same time we charge for the use of cheques. I think having this carrot and stick, push and pull approach, we will continue to see higher take-up of PayNow Corporate.