DBS dangling digital payments bait to corporate clients
Singapore’s DBS Bank is looking to get its corporate clients up to speed with changing consumer behaviour by pushing them towards digital payments.
The bank says it will help its corporate clients reduce cheque usage by at least 30% in the next 24 months.
Raof Latiff, head of digital, institutional banking group, DBS Bank, says the bank has seen a “five-fold increase” in corporate clients requesting for digital payment solutions to be embedded into their processes over the last 12 months.
Latiff adds: “The man-on-the-street wants to receive their payments instantly, without the need to bank in a cheque. The ubiquity of the mobile phone means that cheque payments will soon be a thing of the past and forward-looking companies are re-working their business processes to stay relevant, save time and serve their customers better.”
To deliver on this digital dream, and promote what it’s doing, DBS corporate clients can now plug into the bank’s APIs to pay their retail customers through PayNow.
DBS cites the Association of Banks Singapore, which says that more than 700,000 retail bank accounts are linked to PayNow and it has recorded about SGD 370 million ($281 million) in transaction volume as of January 2018.
PayNow is powered by DBS Ideal Rapid, its API gateway, so customers can “receive their claims instantly”.
According to the bank, the insurance industry is an “early adopter” of PayNow. DBS is working with insurance companies to introduce instant claims payments through PayNow where only a mobile number or National Registration Identity Card (NRIC) number is needed for approved claims to be disbursed.
Currently, the bank notes that most insurance claims are paid through cheques which account for about 10% of corporate cheques issued by DBS in Singapore.
Through such companies making such changes to their payments processes, the bank foresees this 30% reduction in corporate cheque usage by 2020.
