Millennials in Singapore Leading Charge for Mobile Wallets

When mobile payment systems work, they often work well and that’s a great thing. It’s simple, it’s easy, and everyone gets on with their day.

For some, like J.D. Power Director Gordon Shields, the experience doesn’t always go so well, particularly in Singapore, where his attempts to use Apple Pay at a grocery store were met with shrieks of “Apple Pie” and an extended battle before it finally went through.

Such experiences may be more universal than some think, and Singapore’s millennial-generation citizens are starting to increasingly demand mobile wallet access.

Apple Pay only arrived in Singapore back in May, which means it’s probably too early to even begin to figure out how well it’s working. Despite this, however, mobile wallets are on an upward trend.

One in four Singaporeans have adopted mobile wallet systems—not just Apple Pay, either, but many of the others in the field—but at the same time, one out of three Singaporean millennials have brought mobile wallets into play, proving that this is the market of choice for mobile wallets in Singapore.

Reports suggest that the rapid transactions and the transparency into account operations—including quickly-received alerts from card issuers—are all making for a welcome combination for millennial users, and the growing number of places that accept such as payment is also helping.

With banks starting to get in on the action—OCBC Bank alone reported a better than 35 percent growth in contactless payments this year—there’s a clear call to action that comes with that.

When it comes to mobile wallets, there are a lot of benefits. Safe, easy to use, and sometimes the better ones come with their own special deals and rewards structures.

The technology-savvy millennials are especially eager to put these tools to use, and that seems to be fairly standard no matter where you go.

It might be a surprise that Singaporean millennials aren’t so different from American millennials and all the rest, but the picture seems to be holding fairly static.

Though this may not go on forever—some reports suggest Gen Z, which is following millennials, prefers cash—the millennial rise to prime earning and spending ages suggests that banks and others should look seriously at mobile wallets or risk losing out to those who will.