Right, we know how tough it is to figure out many things in business, on your own. But this must be one of the worst.
Figuring out how to get paid.
Let’s start with what you need, before we go into the mechanics of how to do it.
You need…
You will first need to have
- Registered your business on ACRA and gotten a Unique Entity Number
- Gotten a corporate banking account with one of the 3 major banks (ideally, though not a must)
With that out of the way, let’s quickly explain how you can do it.
Don’t go direct to NETS
You would have thought that NETS, being a ‘fintech’ company that helps businesses process payments, would be pretty easy to use.
Nope. They are not.
I had much difficulty trying to search through the NETS website on how to apply for the UEN QR code.
You have to fill up a long form, and then wait for them to get back to you.
My suggestion is that you go directly to the bank you have a corporate account with.
On DBS IDEAL
My familiarity is with DBS IDEAL because I bank with them.
When you log into DBS Ideal, on the left hand side, you will see something saying ‘Merchant Services’.
Click on it.
After that, you will be brought to a screen asking you to apply for different products on the top.
Click on ‘Apply for QR Payment’.
Here, you can then fill up what you want.
And after you put that down, DBS will assign their vendor (NETS) to get in touch with you.
But in the meantime, they will also send you a QR code via email.
NETS is a payment processor that will sign you up to their system, allowing you to get notifications when you get paid.
However, you need to bear in mind that NETS takes a fee of 0.8% per transaction.
For me, the NETS personnel came down to meet me and explained to me what forms I needed to fill up.
Within 4 weeks, I got the QR Code printed out on fancy laminated sheets.
With a UOB Account
The instructions are clearly laid out here.
For OCBC
For OCBC, they also laid out their instructions here.
Now you’re ready to get some moolah
And now, you’re ready for people to start paying you.
If you have a physical storefront, or do occasional pop-ups, this might make sense.
But if you are doing an e-commerce business, it might be better to use a payment gateway, rather than slapping an image of this QR onto your website.
For one, you wouldn’t know whether people paid.
And you wouldn’t find it the easiest to reconcile the different payments into your bank account.
There are better ways.
But at least with a SGQR, you are now closer to making your business work.
Need help?
We can help you implement your point of sale (POS) system, fix your tricky PayNow, and figure out your payment methods. Talk to us.