SINGAPORE - Chinese company Mobike announced the official launch of its bike-share service in Singapore on Tuesday (March 21), joining the two other bike-share providers currently operating here - China-based ofo and local venture oBike.

The company has been quietly rolling out its bicycles here over the last few months and is working with a number of educational institutes here.

"We are pleased to be partnering with National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University, and Republic Polytechnic, for example, to put bikes on their campuses and encourage students and staff to use bikes to get around," said Mobike's head of international expansion Florian Bohnert.

Like its competitors, Mobike utilises a dockless bike-share system, where riders use a mobile app to unlock its bicycles.

Payment is made using debit and credit cards, but Mobike is currently working to allow users to pay by other means.

Mobike currently has more than one million bicycles across 33 cities in China. The firm declined to say how many bikes it currently has in Singapore.

Identified in December as one of the 13 firms in the running for the national bike-sharing scheme, Mr Bohnert said that Mobike is in a "good position" to win the tender

Earlier this month (Mar) Second Transport Minister Ng Chee Meng said the Government was assessing "whether to proceed" with its plans for a national scheme, and that the Land Transport Authority (LTA) was carefully studying the bids.

"The outcome is in the LTA's hands,"he said.