Make electronic payments more convenient

Published in Straits Times Online

I REFER to the Monetary Authority of Singapore's (MAS) reply on Monday ("Why it's not feasible to ditch cheques") to my letter ("Cheques are cumbersome and redundant"; July 3).

I wish to encourage the use of electronic payments, especially for non-regular payments to business entities. I did not suggest that cheques be ditched entirely. I recognise that some people find it more convenient to use cheques, or prefer not to use electronic payments for various reasons.

I believe that MAS has statistics on the number of cheques used in Singapore as a proportion of the population, compared with that of other countries. I hope that it would share these statistics, and I would not be surprised to see that the proportion is high in Singapore.

Perhaps MAS should review the current measures that make it inconvenient to use electronic payments. For example, a customer who uses Internet banking has to register the payee first and authenticate it by SMS. This is an unnecessary hassle for small, one-off payments.

Customers are also not allowed to store their credit card details with online merchants, even if the customers are willing to take the risk. They have to enter their credit card details in full for each transaction. I find this to be inconvenient.

Tan Kin Lian