Currently there are lots of mobile payment companies operating in Singapore, these players include GrabPay(a subsidiary of Grab), AliPay, WeChat Pay, Fave Pay, NETS Pay and some others. In some hawker centers, you can see QR code from different companies. This brings lots of benefits to users. But this introduces a big headache to consumers as they have to download different apps to use in different merchants.
There is no dominating mobile payment company in Singapore though there are a few leaders, GrabPay and AliPay are the leading payers in the region. However, it's still a long way for either one to dominate in this region. So far the mobile payment adoption speed as a whole is slow compared to that in China.
Why would this situation happen? There are a few reasons.
Banking industry is highly developed
Singapore is a country where lots of banks are located. People can easily open a bank account at any bank branch and it's also easy to apply a credit card here. Sometimes you can find booths at MRT stations where banks are promoting credit cards with all kinds of rewards.
In addition, almost every merchant in any shopping mall can support credit card or debit card. So people can pay conveniently with credit card wherever they go without worrying about having to use different cards in different merchants. Even UniPay cards are supported in lots of stores.
People are not convinced by mobile payment
Many merchants don't know how to smoothly use mobile payment yet. They don't know how people can scan the QR code and make the payment and it's not that easy for them to confirm whether they actually received the money. Hence they don't trust this. Once upon a time, an auntie expressed her frustration that she doesn't know whether someone has successfully made the payment since she could not check the phone every time other people is making the payment because she is busy with other customers.
To consumers, the same questions lie, since once they scan the QR code, they need to enter the amount and confirm the payment, sometimes their payment is successful but they don't get success message and hence get confused.
Mobile payment is relatively new here and people are not well educated on how they can use this as their convenient way for payment.
User experience is not ideal
Since there are lots of players in the market which are having their own app to support mobile payment and most of them have different user experience and look and feel. Some apps have bad user experience which hinders the users to use them.
Also there are not too many use cases which people can use mobile payment in Singapore. You can use them in some restaurants and buy movie tickets but lots of them don't support mobile payment yet. In city areas, the supporting merchants are more than those in rural areas. This is not convenient for users since they have to put money in their app but they cannot use it when they want.
Moreover people have to put money in their app before they can make payment. But once the money is put into the mobile app wallet, it's not easy for them to cashout. Some even cannot cashout at all, this means your money will stay there for a long time if not too many stores support pay with this app.
Market share is diversed
Since there are quite some mobile payment apps in the market, and different merchants support different payment methods. This means users need to download lots of apps to make payment in different merchants and they may need to put money in different apps as well. This would greatly impact user adoption.
What to do to speed up the mobile payment adoption?
Education
Mobile payment companies and government should promote mobile payment to people as a life style. They should help mobile payment apps convince people that mobile payment is as secure as other payment methods and they could spend more time on helping educate people on how to use mobile payment.
Better user experience
Mobile payment apps should put more effort on improving the user experience of their app so that users would love to use it as their preferred way of paying.
Mobile payment companies should also collaborate to promote mobile payment. They can use the same QR code scheme so that different apps can scan the same QR code to make payment instead of having to use a specific app. One of the good initiatives is the CFC program lead by NETS.
Promotions
Since mobile payment is at its early staging in Singapore. To build the familiarity, mobile payment companies and merchants can provide rewards like cashbacks, discounts to user who uses mobile payment app to make payment. This should attract people to try out this kind of payment method. But this should be a short term plan to avoid unfriendly competition.
Hope the adoption speed of mobile payment will increase a lot.
