Covid19 Mobile Payments

Rapyd Announces Solidarity Programme for Singapore Businesses to Adopt Digital Payments

Rapyd, a global Fintech as a Service company, today announced a new Solidarity Programme to help Singapore businesses quickly accept payments online with no fees until the end of June, enabling them to serve customers staying at home while reducing their costs, as Singapore battles the COVID-19 pandemic.

Rapyd’s Solidarity initiative includes a full fee waiver (i.e. 0% Merchant Discount Rate and zero transaction fees) on the first S$100,000 in processing volumes for all newly onboarded merchants from now until the end of June 2020.

While the programme is meant to provide meaningful support to startups, small businesses, non-profit organisations responding to the virus, the fee waiver will be available to all Singapore-registered businesses.

In their media statement, Rapyd said that this fully funded initiative is primarily created to; help Singaporean businesses go cashless more quickly, enable real time payment methods like PayNow and FAST and increase operation resilience.

As outlined in the recent McKinsey report, COVID-19 is driving significant behavioural changes and negative business dynamics. Digitisation of payments helps money move faster between individuals and businesses, and in turn, supports and benefits the Singapore economy: real-time payments allow companies to receive payments faster, pay their suppliers and workers faster, reduce credit and other working capital costs, and improve cash flows.

While the virus is a trigger for many businesses to adopt digital payments more quickly, adopting Rapyd’s modern payment infrastructure and accessing all of the locally preferred payment methods in Singapore will help make faster, real-time payments ‘the new normal’ for the Singapore economy.

Joel Yarbrough

On the announcement, Joel Yarbrough, Vice President for Asia Pacific, Rapyd said,

“During these uncertain times, it is essential that businesses can start accepting digital payments quickly and affordably, and ensure that however their customers want to pay them, they can accept the funds easily, and then pay their suppliers and workers just as quickly. Rapyd’s Solidarity Programme is designed to complement the incredible efforts built into Singapore’s Resilience Budget to support Singaporean businesses and workers, and the additional support extended by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to help the FinTech community continue to serve the country during this period. We are grateful for the support we have received, and are happy to be able to reinvest it in Singapore businesses as we all adapt.”

Sopnendu Mohanty

Mr. Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, mentioned,

”We are facing an unprecedented situation with COVID-19. It is during this time that it is all the more important that the private sector and public sector work closely together to support the FinTech community. I applaud Rapyd’s efforts in taking the initiative to step up and provide support for Singapore businesses to adopt digital payments that will facilitate continued commerce during this pandemic. This complements MAS’ FinTech relief package to support revenue generation and offset operating costs of FinTechs and prepare the community to soar to greater heights post crisis.”

In Singapore, Rapyd offers a comprehensive suite of locally preferred payment methods through its partnerships with local payment providers, banks and network partners, including:

Bank Transfers, including instant PayNow and FAST
eWallets including GrabPay, DBS PayLah!, and OCBC PayAnyone
Credit and Debit Cards including Visa, MasterCard, American Express and UnionPay
Kiosk payments at AXS and SAM machines, and
Convert Cash to electronic payments at convenience stores via SoCash

Featured image: Joel Yarbrough, Vice President for Asia Pacific, Rapyd