Razer and Nets bury the hatchet, team up on cashless payments

Photo credit: Razer

In the race to become Singapore’s top mobile payments provider, contenders Nets and Razer haven’t quite had the rosiest of relationships. But today, the two erstwhile rivals announced that they are joining forces to deliver cashless payments in the city-state.

When gaming firm Razer proposed last August that it could roll out a cashless network within 18 months, legacy debit network Nets was somewhat skeptical, hinting that its pedigree put it in a better position to update Singapore’s payments infrastructure.

While Nets CEO Jeffrey Goh said his company was open to partnering with others, Tan Min-Liang, his counterpart at Razer, wasn’t too pleased with the reaction his proposal has received, though he also extended the hand of collaboration.

Fast forward to today, and the two companies’ mutual offers to cooperate have come to fruition. Razer and Nets will work together to enable Nets’ 40,000 unified point-of-sale terminals to accept Razer Pay by the time of its Singapore launch in Q1 2019. The app is already operational in Malaysia.

Razer also revealed that it’s working with luxury ecommerce site Reebonz, events ticketing platform Sistic, travel agency WTS Travel, utilities provider SP Group, and other Singaporean brands on payments.

In particular, it’s collaborating with SP Group to integrate bill payments directly within the Razer Pay app, without the need to scan QR codes. Razer also announced a partnership with Singtel in May.

“Since we announced our intention to launch Razer Pay by the first quarter of 2019, we’ve seen tremendous interest from businesses in Singapore keen to collaborate with us and integrate our e-payment framework,” said Tan.

“This is evidence that […] no existing single provider has managed to satisfy all of these merchants. With our focus on interoperability and collaboration with our industry friends, we’re confident that Razer Pay can step up to be the go-to e-payment provider in Singapore, covering everything from online to offline purchases,” he added.

Tan said in September that Razer would stop trying to partner with other payments companies in Singapore as it doesn’t “see any third-party consumer e-payment provider that is gaining traction,” and would proceed with its proposal unilaterally.