United Overseas Bank offers HCE mobile payments in Singapore

United Overseas Bank
UNLIMITED: Customers can make mobile payments of any value with UOB Mighty

Customers of United Overseas Bank (UOB) in Singapore can now make host card emulation (HCE) based mobile payments for transactions of any value at all Visa PayWave or MasterPass terminals. The new service also makes use of tokenization.

The pay function is available to customers with an Android phone running KitKat 4.4 or higher with any UOB Visa card. Support for MasterCard is expected in early 2016. UOB Mighty also lets both Android and iOS users pay bills, transfer funds and make restaurant bookings and payments within the app.

“Unlike other contactless payments where there is a blanket limit set on the transaction amount, payments made through UOB Mighty have no limit other than the customer’s own credit or debit card limit,” the bank says.

“Customers simply have to launch the UOB Mighty app, select the ‘pay’ function, enter a PIN and tap to pay at NFC-enabled terminals in Singapore and overseas.”

“UOB Mighty has a simple user interface and enables customers to perform daily banking transactions and, in four easy steps, pay bills and transfer funds on the go,” the bank adds. “Since the soft launch on 14 November, UOB Mighty has seen an average of 5,500 unique downloads a day.”

A video shows how the payment feature works:

“Consumers are increasingly attached to their smartphones which have become an indispensable lifestyle device,” says Dennis Khoo, head of personal financial services at UOB Singapore. “At the same time, we have also seen contactless payments on UOB cards grow 67% year-on-year.

“This is why we are offering our customers the option of making contactless payments with tokenized security through their smartphones at the point of sale — whether it is in a supermarket, coffee shop or at a petrol station. UOB is, in fact, the only bank in the world outside of the United States to offer such a service.”

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