WeChat Pay to be ready in 7-Eleven, Guardian Singapore

Customers of 7-Eleven, Cold Storage and Guardian stores in Singapore will soon be able to pay for purchases using WeChat Pay. The owner of the two retail chains, Dairy Farm Group, has worked with NETS to enable visitors from China and Chinese nationals based in Singapore to use the service from November 1.

WeChat Pay is currently being trialled at the 7-Eleven and Guardian stores at Changi International Airport and some stores in key tourist destinations in the Orchard and Chinatown districts.

According to the Singapore Tourism Board, visitors from China increased by almost 13 per cent, from 2.8 million in 2016 to 3.2 million last year. The partnership between Dairy Farm Singapore and NETS together with WeChat will enable Singapore’s largest multi-format retailer to better cater to the growing number of China visitors, by offering visitors a convenient way to pay when they shop in Singapore.

Head of merchant services at NETS, Alvin Seck, said working with payment partners like WeChat and retailers like Dairy Farm Group enables NETS to roll out new payment services for consumers quickly while minimising adoption costs for merchants.

“With this partnership, 7-Eleven and Guardian in Singapore along with Cold Storage and Giant can just make use of its existing NETS uPOS terminals to accept WeChat Pay, in addition to NETS, QR, NETS FlashPay, credit and debit payments.”

To use WeChat Pay for payments, users simply need to scan the NETS QR code on the NETS uPOS terminal.

Dairy Farm Singapore’s regional finance director, Tom van der Lee said this latest payment mode service is part of the multi-format retailer’s digital-transformation journey in line with the government’s ‘Smart Nation’ drive.

“More customers are adopting cashless payments, thanks to easier and faster payment transactions with the uPOS terminal plus the convenience of the wide array of payment options to choose from across our Cold Storage, Giant, 7-Eleven and Guardian stores. Cold Storage alone has seen cashless payment increase by 6 per cent and at Guardian by 3 per cent since Dairy Farm Singapore installed 1800 unified NETS POS terminals last year – the single largest deployment by retailer here.”