One of the biggest rivals of Uber in Southeast Asia, Grab has now launched mobile payment services through it’s Mobile Wallet GrabPay. The users can now use GrabPay mobile wallet to pay for goods and services. The services are currently available in Singapore and will soon be rolled out across all countries in South East Asia by early 2018 once Grab gets the regulatory approvals from respective governments.
The ride-hailing company said that there has been more than 63 million downloads of the GrabPay App. Grab has partnered with 25 food stalls and restaurants currently in Singapore to accept mobile payments using GrabPay and they intend to add more than 20000 merchants in Singapore alone by next year. With wide adoption of Smartphone and cheaper Mobile data, every country in Asia is slowly moving towards cashless payment methods. But in countries like Indonesia and Philippines, cash is still the preferred payment method.
In order to pay any merchant using the mobile payment service, users have to login to the App and tap the GrabPay button. Then they have the scan the QR code which is display on the store or enter the mobile number of the dealer and enter the amount to be paid. Once they slide the navigation bar, the amount will be transferred and both seller and buyer will be notified about the transaction details through the app. Users can top-up the wallet using debit and credit cards, GrabPay credit and other digital payment methods such as Android Pay and Alibaba’s Alipay. Grab has raised more than $2.5 billion in fresh funds in 2017 alone from Japan’s SoftBank group and China’s Didi Chuxing and now they are focusing on growing their mobile payment business. The GrabPay app has more than 4 million downloads in Singapore alone with total download exceeding 63 billion. Also their mobile payment solutions will be available across 132 cities in South Asia by 2018.