The easiest ways to transfer money using your smartphone

Send money via mobile and/or IC number

Transferring money and going Dutch has never been this easy

We’ve all faced the hassle of transferring money to friends and family, staring at our PCs and keying in long, obscure bank account numbers while holding onto our bank tokens.

Times have changed though. These days, we have a lot of ways to transfer money using the apps on our smartphones — so many that it can be confusing to get through them all, which is why we wrote this guide. If you’ve ever wanted an easier way to transfer money to your friends and family, this is it.

Note: This guide is focused on transferring money within Singapore, and not on remittance to overseas. It’s also focused on person to person transfers, instead of merchant payments (some merchants do use the same methods, like QR code payments, to receive money). Lastly, while you can log onto banking websites via the mobile browser, we’re focusing on using apps in this guide.

Option 1: Send money via mobile and/or IC number

This is probably the easiest of all. Thanks to PayNow, you can transfer money to someone using just their mobile or identity card number.

There are two catches. One, both the sender and the recipient need a bank account with a bank that offers PayNow. The good news is that seven major banks, DBS Bank/POSB, OCBC Bank, UOB, Citibank, HSBC, Maybank, and Standard Chartered Bank, do.

The second catch is that while you, the sender, don’t have to register with PayNow to send money, the recipient has to, in order to receive money.
 

What you need

Recipients must register their mobile phone or IC numbers with their bank’s PayNow service. This can be done on the bank’s internet banking website.

How to transfer

Using the recipient’s mobile or IC number, senders can use their bank’s respective app to transfer money using PayNow.

Where does the money come from?

It depends. If your bank’s app also functions as a mobile wallet, like DBS PayLah, you can choose to transfer funds from the wallet or your bank account. If the app is tied only to your bank account, then the money is deducted from your bank account.

How much can you transfer?

PayNow actually allows you to transfer up to $50,000 per day if you use internet banking or mobile banking (through your smartphone’s mobile browser), but if you use your bank’s app, you can transfer up to S$1,000 per day.

Next:  How to send money via QR code