StraitsX and Grab Launch Purpose Bound Money

Digital payments in Asia just got a facelift with StraitsX and Grab’s introduction of Purpose Bound Money (PBM) as digital eCommerce vouchers.

In a joint press release Wednesday (Nov. 2), both companies announced that they would be testing PBM with 5,000 selected trial participants during the 2022 Singapore Fintech Festival.

The PBM token is an alternative payment method that patrons can use as digital currency, transferring it to a merchant’s digital wallet immediately.

StraitsX is a digital asset payments infrastructure company in Southeast Asia. The company makes it easy for account holders to redeem stablecoins, manage payments, and connect their accounts to digital asset platforms.

“We see this as transformative for the development of the digital assets space as PBM could form a new foundation infrastructure for payments, ensuring secure transactions, ease of use and seamless integration,” said Liu Tianwei, deputy CEO of Fazz, owner of StraitsX.

According to the press release, GrabPay, super app company Grab’s payment service, is working with StraitsX and digital currency payment gateway TripleA to support the last-mile settlement of PBM.

In a recent PYMNTS report, “Paying with Cryptocurrency: Can Crypto at Checkout Become a Profit Center for Merchants?”, nearly half of 2,334 respondents view crypto as an investment, and more than 40% want to use it to make payments.

eCommerce payments through digital currencies are growing in popularity, and if this PBM trial is successful, that could mean a standardized digital currency in Singapore, or any other country, is just around the corner.

Read more: Pick n Pay Expands Crypto Payments in South Africa

Crypto payments for grocery and eCommerce are also picking up momentum in Africa. South African grocery retailer Pick n Pay announced Tuesday (Nov. 1) that it has completed the first phase of a pilot that allows customers to pay in-store using the Lightning Network bitcoin payment protocol.