Have you ever encountered a situation when you realize you do not have sufficient cash to pay for your purchases in a hawker centre or wet market, the stall owners do not accept digital payment and ask you to withdraw cash from the nearest ATM? It can be embarrassing and frustrating, isn’t it?
There are several reasons why digital payments are slow to implement or adopted at hawker centres and wet markets.
2. Customers taking advantage of senior stall owners during peak periods
Some customers get away with the actual payment by showing older screenshots of their past recurring transactions or quickly cancel transactions after flashing the pre-payment page. During peak periods, the stall owners would have started attending to the next customer, hence would be preoccupied to closely inspect the digital payment on mobile devices. Moreover, some of them have poor eyesight and could not see the amount flashed briefly before them. One way to avoid this situation is to install the payment terminal, where the receipt can be printed out when the payment goes through. There is a monthly recurring fee to maintain the terminal.
5. Implementation of digital payments is not widely available
Prior to the Hawker Digitalization scheme, stall owners have to go through a difficult process to apply for digital payments for their stall business. The situation improved when NETS stepped in to help stall owners.
8. Hassle printing bank book via ATM to view transactions due to lack of access to internet banking
Some stall owners may not know how to use internet banking to view their digital transactions. The only way to check the transactions is to print their bank books via ATM and tabulate the amounts collected. Hence they prefer counting the actual cash collected which is more straightforward.