Singapore to Phase Out Cheques by 2025
(25 June 2018 - Singapore) The Singapore government plans to reduce cash and increase electronic payments by first targeting a cheque-free economy by 2025.
Singapore also aims to reduce the amount of ATM cash withdrawals by 20 percent by 2020. All service providers, including e-wallet providers, will have to adopt SG QR for scan-and-pay. With the SG QR, consumers will be able to scan a single QR code regardless of e-payment platforms they use, be it NETSPay, Dash, Grab or PayLah!.
Matching initiatives undertaken by the New Payments Platform in Australia, the industry will also extend PayNow, which is currently a service provided to consumers, to businesses to will allow firms to link their Unique Entity Number (UEN) to their bank accounts, removing the need to know the firm’s bank account number.
Minister for Education Ong Ye Kung said in a speech to the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) that Singapore’s aim is not to be a cashless society, but to use less cash and more e-payments. “E-payments are better than cash and cheques. It will be like what consumers are experiencing in China, where they scan QR codes for payments everywhere, but with a few crucial differences. Payment deduction is directly from our bank account and not through an e-wallet. And there will be one standard QR code throughout Singapore – I believe no other country has this.”
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will also be introducing a new Payment Services Bill later this year, to enhance the payments regulatory regime and strengthen safeguards against risks. Singapore has also allowed more competition and innovations instead of having one or two players dominate the market. Similar shifts to ‘cashless’ markets are taking place in other markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco highlights that currently 30 percent of all consumer transactions in the US are paid for using cash – twice the rate of Swedish consumers. The average American writes 38 cheques a year, nearly five times the number of UK consumers. In China, where the credit card industry never became firmly established, the mobile payments industry is more than 50 times the size of the US.
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