Singapore Bank Coalition Gets Together to Advance P2P Payments

Peer-to-peer (P2P) payments systems are an increasingly popular item, mainly because the handful of companies that were actually offering this tool—like Venmo—showed the industry just how much money was involved in such a practice. Now, we’re seeing more P2P services emerge, and one of the latest comes from a coalition of seven banks in Singapore, bringing out the new PayNow system.

PayNow is a P2P fund transfer system that will be available to its end users starting July 10, and will allow customers to send cash back and forth for no charge, with only a mobile number or a national ID number required for verification. Users can get into PayNow through either a mobile banking portal or through the online portal of their bank of choice.

The banks involved in this enterprise include Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, DBS Bank / POSB, Maybank, OCBC Bank, Citibank Singapore Limited and United Overseas Bank. The group noted in a press release that it brought PayNow into the market specifically as a way to make it easier to send and receive cash without having to bring bank account numbers into the picture.

That’s certainly a noble goal, and it’s also a safe bet that the banks in question wanted to give users a way to stay in the fold, and not turn to groups like Venmo for those quick exchanges of cash. Since the PayNow system isn’t charging for the service—which is actually something of a shock—it’s made itself a more attractive proposition than Venmo, if only by a bit.

Granted, Venmo only charges fees in a handful of cases, but the banks likely still want to get a foot in the door, and free services can be helpful in that purpose.

P2P payment services are an increasingly valuable part of everyday mobile payments, particularly as more companies realize that people like having an easy way to send small amounts of cash from one user to another. Whether it’s settling a bet, paying for a share of dinner, or just catching someone up on those “quarter for the vending machine” moments, P2P is valuable. This in turn should prompt more moves into P2P, a point not lost on the Singaporean coalition that brought this one into play.