SINGAPORE - The race to a cashless Singapore just picked up, as Nets announced on Monday (June 25) that merchants can now get their hands on its terminals one day after submitting their applications online.

This new service will save merchants the hassle of submitting physical application forms which can take up to two weeks to process, Nets said. The e-payments company added that the initiative was part of its digital transformation journey to "enhance its service for merchants, increase productivity within the organisation and improve its speed to market".

Nets noted that as account details will be keyed in directly by the merchant, manual labour and data entry errors will be minimised, allowing the merchant to get on board in one working day, as compared to two weeks previously.

Merchants can pick up their Nets terminals from the Nets Customer Service Centre at their convenience, and start using Nets services a day after their application, said Nets.

According to Nets, online applications now make up 5 per cent of new applications since the service was launched last month.

Nets said it has also equipped its sales team with tablets to speed up the onboarding process for non-retail merchants such as hawkers. This enables straight-through processing of the application as information on the tablet is uploaded directly to Nets' operations centre.

Since May 2018, some 50 sales personnel have been testing out the tablet solution for onboarding hawkers and food stall operators, Nets said.

Today, Nets terminals support Nets chip and PIN transactions, credit card payments, as well as contactless payments such as Apple Pay.

Last week, Nets announced that customers of OCBC Bank and UOB can now digitally store their Nets ATM bankcards on the NETSPay mobile app, allowing them to make Nets payments through their mobile phones instead of using their physical Nets ATM bankcards. NETSPay, which was unveiled in October 2017, was previously available only to DBS/POSB customers.