FOMO Pay and Mastercard Collaborate on Tap-on-Phone Payments

Singapore’s FOMO Pay has teamed with Mastercard to debut a tap-on-phone payment solution.

FOMO SoftPOS, announced Friday (Nov. 8), lets merchants accept contactless card payments directly on their smartphones with the FOMO Pay app from the Google Play Store.

The companies noted in a news release that Singapore is the first Asia-Pacific region company where Mastercard will launch Cloud Commerce, a cloud-based payments solution that lets merchants process payments on a mobile device without a point-of-sale (POS) terminal.

“Accepting payments through traditional methods can be challenging for small businesses. Smartphone-based payment solutions lower cost of acceptance and simplify onboarding, making the payment process smoother and more efficient,” said Deborah Heng, Mastercard’s country manager for Singapore.

“Mastercard Cloud Commerce will advance payment solutions and help small businesses unlock the benefits of digital payments, while offering their customers a simple and secure payment experience,” Heng added.

According to the release, merchants can download the FOMO SoftPOS app and accept a wide variety of payment methods, such as QR payments, mobile wallets and credit cards, useful for merchants running things like pop-up stores, food trucks, taxis and pay-on-delivery services.

“In addition to merchants, banks and financial institutions can also leverage the Tap on Phone technology and provide their own contactless payment solutions to their merchants,” the company said, noting that while a majority of people in Singapore use contactless payments, merchants have been slower to adopt these methods.

But change is coming, as research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown, with 71% of merchants saying they think software point-of-sale (SoftPOS) solutions will replace traditional terminals.

Traditional terminals, PYMNTS wrote, carry with them pain points that can hinder business growth, such as high costs, limited payment options and lackluster data analytics capabilities. Just establishing a traditional POS system often requires a significant investment, ranging from $3,000 to more than $10,000 per year for maintenance.

“Beyond its appeal for micro merchants, SoftPOS also provides significant advantages for brick-and-mortar businesses,” PYMNTS wrote.

“For instance, traditional POS systems often lead to long wait times during peak hours, which can frustrate customers and result in lost sales. By using SoftPOS, staff can accept payments directly from customers anywhere in the store, enhancing the shopping experience and reducing bottlenecks.”

This flexibility, the report added, boosts customer satisfaction, while also allowing retailers to optimize deployment of their workers.