PayNow Corporate Guide: How Your E-Commerce Website Can Benefit

The E-commerce industry is booming as sales are expected to reach about 8.1 trillion dollars by 2026. In addition to the 2 billion digital buyers worldwide, experts predict that more than95% of all purchases will be conducted via ecommerce by 2040. In Singapore, our E-payment infrastructure has developed significantly as the government pushes for more cashless transactions. Therefore, we figured a guide to PayNow Corporate would help merchants with cashless transactions and social distancing efforts. 

Your PayNow Corporate Guide: What is PayNow and Why PayNow Corporate?

PayNow was introduced in 2017 as a transfer service allowing locals to transfer payments using their NRIC number, mobile number or unique entity number (UEN). Initiated by The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS), PayNow provides consumers a 24/7 near-real time transaction without exchanging account numbers. 

Thereafter, PayNow Corporate was launched in 2018 where businesses could send and receive payments with their UEN or via Quick Response (QR) code. Most certainly, the convenience and ease of contactless payments were popular amongst Singaporeans with the number of PayNow transactions reaching 5 million last year.As such, this PayNow Corporate guide will teach you how to register for PayNow Corporate and show the different bank charges. In addition to that, we also explain the payment methods available to merchants. 

How do I register and start using PayNow Corporate?

Source: The Association of Banks Singapore

Firstly, you have to register with your respective banks involved in the PayNow initiative. The banks include: Bank of China, Citibank Singapore Limited, DBS Bank/POSB, HSBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited, Maybank, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, and UOB. After that, you can proceed to generate your QR codes to enable customers to scan and pay.

1) API-based PayNow Corporate Integration

How It Works: API-based PayNow Corporate Integration is a real-time online payment method where merchants can sign up with the bank to enable API-based PayNow Corporate. Thereafter, eCommerce Developers like Verz Design will consume the bank’s API and integrate PayNow Corporate into your E-commerce website. As a result, your customers will see a dynamic QR code at your website’s checkout page with your product amount and reference ID information embedded inside.

Pros:

• Payment processes are expedited because the payment is sent and received instantly.
• Saves you the time and hassle of having to manually confirm each payment.
• Above all: no transaction cost (as reflected in current promotion offers from banks).

Cons:

• Has a relatively high integration cost ranging from $3000-4000 for E-commerce websites.
• Has a longer lead time to fully complete the integration.

What we recommend: API-based PayNow integration is best suited for businesses with a high transaction volume. Although the cost of integration is relatively high, you will enjoy greater cost savings in the long run for high volume E-commerce transactions.

Moreover, our team at Verz Design offers this simple and easy API-Based PayNow integration service for your E-commerce website! With API integration, you will be able to enjoy fuss-free and seamless transactions 24/7. As such, talk to us to find out more about how you can integrate PayNow Corporate into your E-commerce website.

2) PayNow Offline Payment Option

How It Works: E-commerce websites can also provide offline payment options by using a Static QR code. However, merchants will need to manually verify payment transactions. At the checkout page, customers can scan the static QR code via a banking application on their phone to complete the flow of payment. Thereafter, merchants will need to manually confirm if the payment was received successfully before manually updating the order status. After that, they will advance the order to the next stage via the E-commerce dashboard.

Sample of an E-Commerce website’s checkout page with instructions on manually completing payment.

Pros:

• Integrating the static PayNow QR code payment method into your E-commerce website is very fast.
• Extremely accessible and cost-effective payment method.

Actually, it’s free-of-charge at Verz Design! Our team of experienced programmers can integrate the PayNow Corporate offline payment option for free into your checkout page when we build your E-commerce website. Talk us today for the integration of PayNow Corporate into your website.

Cons:

• Significant amount of manual labour and backend work required. This is because you need to manually confirm each buyer’s transactions and ensure that the correct payment is received.
• Your company might even need to hire extra administrative staff when your shop experiences high transaction volume.

What we recommend: This PayNow Corporate offline payment option is suited for small E-commerce merchants that want something accessible, fast and at a low cost. In short, this payment method is good for small businesses with a low transaction volume that do not wish to commit to a large-scale transaction method yet. 

3) Third-Party Payment Gateway

How it works: Think of third-party payment gateways as the middleman between option 1 and 2. To summarise: third-party payment gateways enable PayNow’s gateway in their system and develop plugins and extensions for programmers to install into E-commerce shops. However, third-party gateways usually take a cut of 1% per transaction.

HitPay uses an online PayNow payment flow where transactions happen in real time and sellers do not have to confirm payments from customers

Omise uses an offline PayNow payment flow where sellers are required to manually confirm transactions from customers

Pros:

• Affordable, one-time integration cost of $500 to install, configure and run tests on third party plugins or extensions.
• Faster turnaround time of integrating the plugin/extension into your E-commerce website compared to API-Based PayNow Corporate integration (option 1)

Cons:

• Transaction fee of 1% per transaction might add up significantly in the long term.

What we recommend: Third-party gateways are good for small-to-medium businesses seeking to increase their transaction volume. This payment method is good for businesses not ready to spend a hefty fee to integrate API-based PayNow Corporate into their E-commerce website.

Go cashless and benefit from PayNow Corporate today!

Satisfied with our PayNow Corporate guide? Our experienced E-commerce developer team at Verz Design is confident to provide you with seamless PayNow Corporate integration services. Thereafter, your customers will be able to enjoy effortless transactions on your E-commerce website. 

Moreover, businesses can enjoy up to 50% support with the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG), Skillsfuture Enterprise Credit (SFEC) and Digital Resilient Bonus (DRB) when you build an E-commerce website with Verz.