Mobile Wallets Spotlight: Singapore

Loke Hwee Wong

VP and GM APAC

5 min read

September 25, 2021

Over the past 2 years, Southeast Asia has added more than 70 million online shoppers. This growth has in large part been driven by consumers adopting mobile wallets. Mobile wallets give a bigger audience access to online payments than credit cards and bank-based payments.

While Singapore is a small market with a population of just 5.8 million, the city-state has disproportionate spending power as well as e-commerce usage. The technology hub for Southeast Asia, Singapore is set to reach mobile wallet penetration of nearly 95% by 2025. Mobile wallet transactions are projected to increase by 11x, as Singapore accelerates towards a highly digitized economy:

Mobile wallet users: 1.8M in 2020, forecast to grow to 5.8M by 2025
Mobile wallet ownership: 30% of the population, 95% by 2025
Mobile wallet transaction volume: 101M transactions, 1.1B transactions by 2025
Mobile wallet transaction value: $1.4B, $8B by 2025

Singapore’s mobile wallet landscape: GrabPay, Favepay, DBS PayLah!, Singtel Dash, EZ-Link

Despite its small population, the mobile payments ecosystem in Singapore is thriving. The regional super app Grab commands a 35% market share and benefits from a host of financial services they provide. Other mobile wallets on the market include a telco-operated one (Singtel Dash), a bank-based wallet (DBS payLah!) as well as the digitized version of the national transit card (EZ-Link).

In terms of user growth by mobile wallet in Singapore, here is our forecast for the next 4 years:

Singapore Mobile Wallet User Growth Forecast — Singaporean Mobile Wallet User Growth Forecast

Want to launch mobile wallet payments in Singapore? Conclusions

Singapore is moving quickly towards a cashless future, as nearly 95% of the population are projected to be using mobile wallets by 2025.

For merchants looking to grow their revenue in Singapore, integrating mobile wallets to reach online consumers is crucial. If you are looking to launch mobile wallets in Singapore and other Asian countries through one turnkey integration, get in touch.

For more data on mobile wallet payments in Singapore and 20+ other countries, download our Mobile Wallets Report 2021.

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