OCBC said it has added eight major Southeast Asian e-wallets to its mobile banking app, letting customers in Singapore send money directly from their bank accounts to wallets in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
The new links allow transfers to GCash, Coins and PayMaya in the Philippines; GoPay, Ovo and LinkAja in Indonesia; MoMo in Vietnam; and Touch ’n Go in Malaysia.
The feature, powered by Visa Direct, is near-instant and comes with no transfer fees, OCBC said. The bank integrated China’s Alipay and Weixin Pay a year ago, bringing its total supported wallets to 10.
The move targets Singapore’s large foreign workforce and expatriate community, many of whom remit money home regularly.
By pushing bank-to-wallet transfers, OCBC is trying to capture flows that still run through cash remittance shops and agents, which can be slower and costlier, and are less useful for recipients without bank accounts.
OCBC said transfers to the two China wallets have exceeded S$60 million since launch, with volumes rising sharply as users shifted to app-based remittances.
The lender expects adoption to climb further with the addition of popular regional wallets, especially for small-ticket, frequent transfers.
Sunny Quek, OCBC’s head of global consumer financial services, said the bank aims to connect customers to 50 digital wallets worldwide over the longer term, extending the app’s role beyond traditional account-to-account remittance.
Business News Asia
