3 local banks partner with Google to launch Google Pay services by early 2020

SINGAPORE — Local banks DBS and OCBC Bank have entered into partnerships with Google to launch Google Pay services by early 2020, they announced on Monday (Nov 11).

DBS' collaboration with Google, which includes the integration of both peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant transaction services, will allow DBS PayLah! customers to send and receive funds and pay merchants via Google Pay using a single-click sign-up.

Similarly, OCBC Bank customers will be able to make account-to-account PayNow fund transfers using Google Pay from January 2020.

Meanwhile, Standard Chartered said on Tuesday that it, too, will launch its Google Pay service early next year for its clients in Singapore. 

DBS’ chief strategy officer Han Kwee Juan said that the bank's partnership will deliver “greater convenience” to consumers as they will have more options to transfer funds and make instant payments to some 80,000 merchants in Singapore.

“This collaboration demonstrates our commitment towards building wholly seamless, intuitive services for our customers and is in line with our plans to ramp up our ecosystem partnerships regionally,” he added.

In September, the bank announced that it would more than double DBS PayLah!’s existing user base of 1.6 million to 3.5 million by 2023.

OCBC Bank said that its service is currently in beta-testing phase and select customers will be able to link their bank accounts to make digital payments.

Mr Ching Wei Hong, chief operating officer at OCBC Bank, said: “The potential of Google Pay leveraging PayNow is tremendous and will provide our customers the benefits of secure, seamless and ubiquitous payments without having a wallet.

“When it launches here, Google Pay will offer our customers a unique proposition for making payments that is frictionless and requires no extra hoops for customers to jump through to access their bank account funds.”