Pay via the Smarter way with DBS PayLah! (DBS PayLah!)

If you are a customer of DBS, you probably would have heard or seen DBS Paylah! from the various advertisements and banners out there in the market. It is essentially a personal mobile wallet that allows you to do various transactions similar to cash but just that you do not see the actual money. 

The DBS Paylah! app is quite similar to other payment apps in the market that have been around for years. For the audience that comes from China, it is almost identical to your Alipay or Wechat Pay whereby one uses QR(Quick Response) code to do transactions with another party. In Singapore, other similar apps that use QR code to do payment includes NETSPay by Network for Electronic Transfers (SG) Pte Ltd, UOB Mighty by United Overseas Bank Limited Co, OCBC Pay Anyone by Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited, Liquid Pay by Liquid Group Pte. Ltd and not forgetting GrabPay by Grab Holdings.

The reason why QR code is fast gaining adoption as the mode of passing information is due to its usefulness in being able to pass a lot more information than barcodes and it can generate dynamic QR code. This means if you were to scan a QR code, it can allow you to do things such as lead you to a particular website to buy a product if it was an advertisement on a magazine/newspaper, allow you to earn loyalty rewards with the QR code shown on the receipt or in the case of DBS Paylah!, make payment to a merchant by scanning the merchant's unique QR code.

Below is my simplified visual explanation of how payment is done with the scanning of QR code. It is almost similar to sending out an email but instead of having to manually type out the recipients' bank account number, all you have to do is scan the recipients' QR code, input the amount and click "Send".

Above is a simple process flow diagram that shows how payment is done with QR code. Essentially, the QR code on the merchant's phone may represent the bank account number of the merchant or account ID of the merchant depending on how the app is set up to generate the QR code. When the customer scans the merchant's QR code with the app, it will be able to identify the account ID of the recipient to pay to. After the customer has input the amount and clicked "Send", a request will be sent to the backend for the money to be transferred from the customer's account to the merchant's account. There are many other ways of doing payment in the backend which I will not go into details here.

Going digital with payments has several benefits. One of it is a decrease in crime rates due to the absence of physical money. Imagine you are a shop owner and you have to bring the takings from the shop and deposit it into the bank, how scary it is to be carrying around a huge amount of cash. It would also help to prevent staff from frauding the system as shown in a recent article by Straits Times whereby the payment made by the customer was in cash by was altered on the Point of Sales (POS) by the staff as redemption with loyalty points. Click here to read the article from Straits Times.

Another benefit is the transaction data. As payment between consumer and merchant is done through the app, these transaction data provides valuable information for the merchants in terms of targeting and promotions. Previously when payment is done via cash or credit card, there is no way for the merchants to identify if the conversion of the consumers was due to marketing efforts or walk in. However, if payment was done with a mobile app and it allows the merchant to advertise to past consumers, merchants will be able to know what is the conversion rate of its marketing efforts and be able to come up with promotional campaigns that are well suited to a certain profile of consumers. 

For eg. Starbucks accepts payment via the DBS Paylah! app. A consumer purchase a Matcha Latte drinks from Starbucks and paid via DBS Paylah! With this transaction data, Starbucks could probably send out an EDM about the launch of their New Matcha drink via the DBS Paylah! app to consumers who have previously bought Matcha Lattes from Starbucks or even The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. This benefit will enable merchants to have better conversion rates and consumers to be offered products that are to their likings.

After reading so much, let me show you the screenshots of how the DBS Paylah! app looks like. By the way, the background color is based on the Dragonfruit which is claimed to be the millennial color. 

Main Screen of App

Inbox to see all the pending transactions 

History of Transactions

QR code to show to receive payments from others

Scan QR code from others DBS Paylah!

Generate your QR code and the amount for others to pay you

For those who want to have the guide on how to use DBS Paylah! app, click "here" to see their Step by step guide. And if you want to find out more about DBS Paylah!, you can click "here" to find out more. And for all of you who do not have the DBS Paylah! app yet, click "here" and input "ERNHG1066" as the referral code to get $5 credit as sign up bonus. (You get $5 and i get $5, we all get $5 each) For Shop owners who want to accept DBS Paylah! as payment, you can click "here" to sign up.

Digital payment is definitely going to become a part of the payment method in Singapore besides cash and credit card. The issue boils down to how will it be convenient and easy for both merchants and consumers to adopt and benefit from it. I would say that it is currently fragmented and people are still hesitant to use it due to the lack of widespread adoption. Over time, there will need to be consolidation for only a few digital wallets to exist then digital payment will become a norm in Singapore just like how it is between Wechat and Alipay in China.

Are you using DBS Paylah! currently or do you use other digital wallets to make payment. Go ahead to comment on it and don't forget to subscribe via email or like our Facebook page for the latest updates!