Nets to start contactless payments

NETS, SINGAPORE’S main payment network and operator of the country’s PIN Debit scheme, is touting improvements to its payments system when the process goes digital and contactless in the coming weeks.
The contactless function will let users make payments with Nets below $100 (Bt35,000) - a standard limit set by the industry to prevent the abuse of lost cards - without a personal identification number. Payments above $100 will still require a PIN or fingerprint authentication.
The function will be available in several forms, including credit cards, which are due to be issued by banks in this half of the year, mobile phones and wearables like smartwatches, Nets chief information officer Vincent Low said on Tuesday.
“Contactless payment is something people are familiar with, and Nets is working with our shareholder banks, who are issuers, on a Europay, MasterCard and Visa-compliant standard.”
Nets chief executive Jeffrey Goh also noted that the mobile phone option will be rolled out by banks soon and will operate via an application called Nets Pay, which will be similar to the Apple Pay mobile payment service.
It will require consumers to add their card details to a digital wallet on their phone.
Consumers with phones that have near-field communications (NFC) technology will be able to pay with a tap on terminals with a payment reader.
Those whose phones do not have NFC can pay by scanning a QR code on terminals with the camera. QR codes can also be used to make Nets payments on e-commerce websites.
Goh said the payment network is also in talks with AliPay, China's largest online payments service, and DBS Bank over its PayLah mobile wallet app, to enable payment on Nets Pay from those two services.
Low added that consumers will also be able to make payments within the Nets Pay app itself in future.
Nets is also upgrading terminals to accept payment from cards of all banks. 
Instead of several different terminals at a check-out counter from different issuers, cashiers will only need to use one. 
This also means consumers do not have to worry about not having certain cards. Supermarket chain Sheng Siong started using these new terminals in late December.
 Goh said: “We know that not everyone has access to a credit card. There's still 30 to 40 per cent of the Singapore market without credit cards, so we need to cover that spectrum.”