OCBC facilitates near-instant P2P transfers to Weixin Pay and Alipay

By Gloria Mathias

OCBC, enabled by Visa Direct, has allowed customers to send near-instant peer-to-peer transfers to both Weixin Pay (WeChat Pay) and Alipay using the recipient’s China national identification name and China mobile number.

The expansion of OCBC’s remittance capabilities is timely as money flows from Singapore to China continue to grow. As more individuals relocate from China to Singapore to live and work and continue to remit funds home, OCBC has seen a 50% jump in its Singapore customers’ remittances to China from a year ago.

OCBC’s pay-to-wallet service transfers money within seconds. This improves on the current average of two to five days using other account-to-account or non-bank remittance services. In addition, it eliminates the need to physically carry cash to non-bank remittance companies to make a cross-border fund transfer.

OCBC will continue to work with Visa Direct so that by 2026, digital wallets like GoPay and Ovo in Indonesia and GCash, PayMaya, and Coins in the Philippines will be able to receive funds from OCBC Singapore bank accounts almost instantly and at competitive exchange rates. In total, the OCBC app will have access to more than 50 digital wallets, providing the most comprehensive digital wallet access of any banking app in the Asia Pacific.

Sunny Quek, OCBC’s Head of Global Consumer Financial Services, said, “Partnering with Visa to offer our pay-to-wallet service marks a significant step in enhancing the convenience and efficiency of global remittances for our customers. We’re starting with access to the two biggest digital wallets in China, Weixin Pay and Alipay, but will quickly be expanding our services by adding more wallets to our digital payment capabilities. There is urgency to do so given the increasing cross-border needs of our customers, chief of which is the need to remit money home. Another use case is e-commerce. Buyers in Singapore sometimes need to make direct payments to small independent sellers in another market.

“Our wider goal is to become the go-to app for cross-border transactions in Greater China, ASEAN, and even globally. Our customers can already scan and pay merchants globally using their OCBC app. With the rollout of our peer-to-peer pay-to-wallet service today, we are well on our way to achieving this goal.”