OpenPay

The problem with QR payments

The user experience of paying businesses via PayNow is still meaningfully slower and more complex than when using cards. Cards offer a simple 1-tap experience, whereas using PayNow requires multiple payer-initiated steps.

For example, when paying a merchant in person, a payer has to open the bank app, enter their payment amount, and show proof of payment to the merchant. All these steps can easily add up to 10-15 taps for a single payment flow (excluding phone and bank authentication). Furthermore, this flow invites anxiety for both parties that the correct amount has been entered.

When paying a merchant online, the problem becomes even clearer. Users have to download the QR code onto their phones and upload them to banking apps. Some merchants require users to screenshot the page instead, causing some bank apps to encounter issues reading the QR code. When payment is complete, users have to manually return back to the merchant’s website or app to ensure the payment went through. To top it all off, once complete, users have to separately go to their image library to delete the saved QR code.

PayNow in 3 taps

We believe paying with PayNow should only take 3 taps:

1. Tap phone on NFC tag (in-person) or tap the QR code (online),

2. Tap to choose bank app to pay from.

3. Tap to confirm payee and amount.

How it works: app deeplinking and NFC

App deeplinking is what allows users to access a particular screen of an app without going from its homepage. It is also used in the Singpass mobile authentication flow when users tap the on-screen QR code.

In the in-person flow, card terminals emit an NFC signal with the deeplink. This means that merchants who already use card terminals to accept dynamic NETS/PayNow QR payments would not need to add additional steps to their existing flows.

In the online flow, the image of the QR code is linked to the deeplink. Thus, online merchants who accept PayNow can simply add a link behind their QR code images to implement this flow.

India and Brazil have adopted similar solutions for their fast transfer mechanisms. India’s UPI standard has been extended to UPI Intents, allowing users to pay online with the tap of a deeplinked button. Brazil’s Pix standard has implemented tap-to-pay, allowing users to launch a Pix payment flow through NFC, by tapping their phones on existing card machines.

Why this is not feasible today

Today, Singapore banking apps don't expose deeplinks to their PayNow confirmation pages. We need bank apps to expose this for this flow to be feasible.

Going further, if the industry follows the UPI and Pix precedents where a unified protocol is defined by the central bank, the app launcher can even be replaced by the phone’s native app launcher (which is already the case for Pix). Then, users could select a default application, reducing the number of taps to 2.

Further opportunities

Even if merchants do not have card terminals, having an Android phone or iPhone should be sufficient. Today, both types have the ability to be used as a smartphone POS via NFC. All that is needed is a mobile app where users request payment for a specified amount, and then emulates the NFC deeplink. Ideally, this would also be a flow made available within banking apps.

This flow can also easily extend to in-person P2P payments. If one needs to request a payment from someone else, the payee could initiate a request on their phone, and the payer can simply tap their phone on the payee’s to complete the payment flow - no more “what’s your phone number? how much ah?”.

The team

(Left to right) Gaille, Gerald, Geraldine, Harsh, Justin, Justyn, Mahirah, Zong Han

The team simultaneously worked on CouponSG during HFPG 2026.

Credits to Daniel Sim for the images used above.