SINGAPORE – Visitors to Singapore will soon be able to use their Wise app to scan and pay for goods and services here.

The fintech giant said on March 7 that it has connected directly to the PayNow network, so users are able to make QR code payments directly through its app to thousands of merchants once the feature is up and running in a few months. 

Singapore will be the first country to get the Wise scan-to-pay feature, with other markets to follow. 

The process is much like other multi-currency payment apps. Funds will be deducted from a customer’s Wise account – either directly from his Singapore dollar balances, or converted from other currencies at the mid-market rate, which can usually be found through a Google search.

The app will show any fees and the final amount that will be charged before the user confirms payment.

Wise already offers a debit card that functions in a similar way. It has issued more than four million of these cards globally, and processes around 33 million transactions a month.

Mr Shrawan Saraogi, Wise’s Asia-Pacific head of expansion and Singapore country manager, told The Straits Times that the move will allow visitors to pay at places like hawker centres that do not usually accept card payments. 

Such shops already offer a range of QR code payment options, but these are dominated by banking apps and fintech players that largely cater to customers living here. 

“There are places, especially in Singapore and elsewhere in South-east Asia, where QR is a common way to pay. There are also places that don’t accept cards, but which accept QR payments,” said Mr Saraogi.

Non-bank financial institutions have been able to use PayNow since February 2021, leading to more competition in the e-wallet space. 

In April 2023, China’s Ant Group announced that tourists in Singapore could make QR e-payments via Alipay+ at about 11,000 hawker centre stalls, coffee shops and wet markets.

Partner e-wallets supported by Alipay+ include AlipayHK from Hong Kong, Touch ‘n Go eWallet from Malaysia, GCash in the Philippines, TrueMoney from Thailand and Kakao Pay in South Korea.

Asia-Pacific is Wise’s fastest-growing market, comprising about 20 per cent of its overall revenue.

The number of personal and business customers in Singapore, Wise’s regional hub, expanded by 26 per cent from 2022 to 2023. 

Its upcoming move to allow customers to scan and pay here comes at a time when it is eyeing further growth for its payments business that complements its remittance activities. 

Its workforce here has more than doubled from 2022 to around 450. It has also appointed new senior hires in areas such as expansion, product development and compliance, including Mr Saraogi, who joined in September 2023.

The Singapore hub houses teams responsible for launching products across the company’s global business, including one that designs and rolls out the Wise debit card for personal and business customers worldwide.

Wise has seen an increase in transaction volumes and card spending as travel bounces back, noted Mr Saraogi.

Firms are also expanding globally and catering to customers beyond their shores, which has led to a rise in cross-border payments, he added, when speaking to ST at the company’s recently expanded office space in Paya Lebar Quarter.

“With the rise of more digital banks, neobanks and other kinds of online platforms that are global in nature, we find that our Wise Platform offering is also finding a lot more uptake,” he said, referring to a solution that lets financial institutions and enterprises leverage Wise’s technology to send, receive and manage money internationally.

“A lot of those organisations or companies need this infrastructure, and they find that it’s better for them to partner with someone like us (with global scale) versus trying to do it themselves.” 

Players like Wise will also benefit from a recent move by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to raise the amount of money consumers can hold and spend in their e-wallets.

The regulator moved in December to allow e-wallets to hold up to $20,000 at any one time, instead of $5,000, while the maximum amount that can be spent over a rolling 12-month period was raised from $30,000 to $100,000.

Wise still has the lower limits in place, but Mr Saraogi noted that the firm is “working on the changes that are required in order to enable that”, adding that “it should come in the near future”.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said that visitors from Thailand and Indonesia can make QR code payments in Singapore via the PayNow system. This is incorrect. We are sorry for the error.