DBS/POSB extended its initiative for another six months amid rising costs.

 

DBS/POSB is extending its year-long 5 Million Hawker Meals initiative for another six months till July 26, 2024, subsidising a total of 7.5 million hawker meals over 18 months. Singaporeans and residents can continue to enjoy cashback of up to S$3 when they are among the first 100,000 to use the PayLah! app to scan and pay for their meals every Friday at over 11,600 hawker stalls with SGQR codes islandwide.

Close to five million hawker meal subsidies have been redeemed so far. Among those who redeemed the subsidies, 33 percent are seniors and/or earning less than S$2,500 a month. Besides helping customers manage costs, this initiative has also sparked a positive ripple effect in the community by boosting participating hawkers’ businesses. To date, the three most popular hawker centres where redemptions were made were Amoy Street Food Centre, Pasar 216 Bedok Central and Boon Lay Place Food Village. The top three most popular hawker stalls were Hup Lee Cooked Food (Toa Payoh West Market & Food Centre), Tian Bo Shui Kueh Pte Ltd (84 Marine Parade Central Hawker Centre), and Hawstar (Kampung Admiralty Hawker Centre).

Elayne Ang, co-founder of Tian Kee Carrot Cake at Marine Parade Central Market and Food Centre, said: “We appreciate the initiative, which has left a tangible and very real benefit on us hawkers, and also our customers. We’re seeing a 10- to 15-percent jump in crowd traffic at the hawker centre every Friday, which has benefitted our business. It’s also nice to see how this initiative has indirectly encouraged more seniors to learn to use digital payments – we do see more seniors using the subsidy at our stall, which sometimes sparks others in the queue to want to learn how to redeem it too!”

The weekly hawker meal subsidies have also furthered the bank’s efforts to equip the less digitally-savvy with key skills and know-how to navigate a rapidly digitalising world. As part of a partnership between DBS Foundation and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to drive digital inclusion, the bank regularly organises digital literacy workshops across the island, many of which are now held on Fridays at participating hawker centres. The workshops aim to help residents in these neighbourhoods learn how to access the subsidy and pick up other skills such as digital banking, cashless payments, and scam awareness, and to put what they have learned into practice by purchasing a meal from the stalls onsite. Altogether, over 400 digital literacy workshops have been run over the past year, benefitting some 59,000 individuals.

(** PHOTO CREDIT: DBS/POSB)