Cashless society - how I survive on less than $50 per week

Even before the talks of Smart Nation or a cashless society, I was already operating on less than $50 in cash per week for all my expenditure. Given my love for credit card rewards especially cash rebates and convenience, going cashless was a no brainer. I'm an early adopter of most new payment methods in Singapore. This is how I survive without cash most of the time.

Going to work: Set up the VCashCard arrangement so as to avoid having insufficient credit when crossing the ERP. 

Breakfast: use credit card pay wave to pay for breakfast ; this was superseded by Apple Pay after that was launched 

Lunch: Pay my colleague via Paylah as she helps me tabao / pack lunch or we split the bill when eating out: 

Return home: Book cab using Uber/ Grab , where payments are all made using credit card. If I take MRT / bus, I have my handy Citibank SMRT card with auto top up function so I will never run out of credits. 

For all other payments to friends or family, there's FAST payment via internal banking , PayNow, Dash (by Stanchart) and OCBC Pay Anyone that I would use as well. For online shopping, there's PayPal to complete the purchase quickly. 

However, despite having armed myself with all these payment tools,  I still find myself stuck at most hawkers or stores that don't accept nets or credit card. So I recently added a new app Fave (formerly Groupon) , and tried to use FavePay at my two frequently visited stores as I can earn 5% rebate on next purchase. 

Started my first attempt at Newton Hawker centre and told the auntie at store that I wanted to try. She muttered something about not knowing but it didn't sound that firm. Hence, I told her that I would get to earn 5% rebate so I wanted to try. She didn't object. However, after I setup my card and actually made the payment , she suddenly realised that she's not going to get cash. Then she started to rant at me that I'm not supposed to pay using that. She wanted cash. I was taken aback and voluntered to try to cancel the transaction somehow and give her cash instead. 

She then grudgingly said that she doesn't know how to use the phone given to her . However , eventually she just told me to forgot it , next time don't use this FavePay please. 

With this incident, it was instantly clear why widespread adoption has failed. If the collectors of payment are dissuading payees from using due to lack of confidence or understanding , cashless payment will not take off. 

In any case, besides that store, the other store I tried was more successful so I earned my loyalty rebates easily. You can claim $3 using this link too. 

On a separate day:  I tried to top up my prepaid Kopitiam card. Usually, this means I have to use up my entire week of cash (up to $50) to top up as there's no other option. Last month, I was delighted to see that credit card and Apple Pay option was available. I excitedly started to try the machine. 

After I completed pressing all required buttons, it was shown to me at the last step that there was a $1 processing fee. With that , I swiftly cancelled the transaction and reverted back to using cash. Wish they had told me earlier for I would not select the cashless option upfront. 

With this incident, I realised why cashless payment can fail again. Who wants to pay 2% extra just to go cashless ? Fees have to be reasonably low so that we or merchants don't feel the pain so much. Perhaps what is needed is s more decentralised platform for payments so fees can be reduced to a bare minimum. 




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