Cashless systems must go beyond replacing cash

China’s cashless systems are indeed starting to mature. However, the two apps being used, Alipay and WeChat Pay, are at that stage owing to the needs of consumers (‘Spore should learn from China’s advanced e-payment systems’”; Sept 19).

Alibaba’s websites have about an 80 per cent market share of e-commerce in China, while WeChat is the country’s most popular chat app. Singapore does not have apps that can serve such purposes, for now at least.

Most of us use WhatsApp, but that has not been developed for payments. We have the ez-link card and cash cards, but they are not universal, and we must top up the cards once the value is used up.

If we want to have something that people would commonly use, it must be an item we already have and is easy to use.

The banks are supporting PayNow, but I have not used the service so far.

If PayNow is to be more widely accepted, the consumer must benefit from using it not only to replace cash, but also for other requirements.

We now see RazerPay, Nets, GrabPay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Alipay, et cetera in a race. The companies should rely more on themselves instead of the Government for their systems to stand a better chance of emerging as a winner.

I hope that whichever works will be done by Singaporeans for Singapore.