In May, the hotel started accepting cashless payments on WeChat Pay and Alipay in its bars, restaurants, hotel spa and gift shop – as well as for suite stays. While the hotel declined to reveal official figures, it confirmed there had been a rise in the number of guests using Chinese e-payment methods.
Another Singaporean company that has benefited is local bike-sharing operator Anywheel, whose new “mini-app” registered over 4,500 new users from China within its first month of launching in September. There were “three times more users registered with +86 numbers over a period of six months,” the company said, referring to China’s country code.
But it hasn’t just been big name establishments that have been quick to accept digital yuan. Official statistics from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) revealed that there were around 10,000 hawkers accepting payment on WeChat.
Ms Rachel Chua, 50, who runs a drink stall in the Maxwell Food Centre, told CNA that Chinese tourists would use Alipay “even for something as small as 30-cent tissue packets. To draw their attention, she displays prominent WeChat Pay and Alipay signs at the front of her stall, she said.
But some Chinese tourists, like Ms Li Xiang, 36, from Guangxi, who travelled to Singapore with her boyfriend during Golden Week, still rely on cash and coins to pay for their small purchases. “We exchanged some cash just in case. We can use WeChat and Alipay in the shopping malls but smaller places, like some hawker stalls, don’t accept it,” Ms Li told CNA.
