Paying for a curry puff or a savoury stick of fried sotong head at Old Chang Kee will be a breezy affair in the near future, when the chain goes cashless with NETS' contactless CashCard technology.

Besides forking out a dollar note, customers will be able to simply flash their contactless NETS CashCard at a reader placed near the counter. The amount will be automatically deducted in a mere second.

After piloting the technology at its Tiong Bahru Plaza outlet in early 2009, Old Chang Kee now has plans to roll it out at its 70 or so outlets dotted all over the island later in the year.

Though it might surprise some that a traditional fried snack company is so tech-savvy, the benefits of going cashless has been obvious to CEO William Lim for years.

“When we saw that NETS has the contactless card, we knew we could use it for our stores,” he says. The pilot trial, he adds, confirmed that transactions are very fast and that hardly any training was needed for its operators.

The benefits for Old Chang Kee, he notes, are three-fold.

Firstly, without having to collect cash and give back change, staff can offer faster service, letting customers quickly complete their purchase. This means short queues during peak hours.

Secondly, NETS offers better cash management. Without having to bank in so many dollar notes and coins each day means that the company can concentrate on its core business – serving up great Singaporean snacks.

Going cashless could also mean discounts for customers during designated promotion hours – at least those who pay with a contactless CashCard. Says Mr Lim: “Instead of charging S$1.20 for a curry puff, we can now, say, charge S$1.18 or S$1.19 during a happy hour promotion. We don't worry about giving back a change of one or two cents, like when we handle cash.”

Finally, using a NETS contactless CashCard also opens the opportunity for Old Chang Kee to understand its customers better. The company is considering branding special edition NETS CashCards as loyalty cards, which could enable it to understand customers' buying patterns better.

Mr Lim says it currently has raw data, like which are busiest hours and outlets, but he hopes to be able to understand the preferences for each segment of customers, which span the entire age range from young schoolchildren to grandparents. With a contactless loyalty card, he can track the preferences for each group of customer.

Currently, Old Chang Kee processes about 50,000 transactions a day. If 20 per cent of these are converted to cashless payment using NETS contactless CashCards, Mr Lim says he'd be happy.

He is also hoping that the volume will increase later this year, when the NETS contactless CashCards can be used for transit as well. This means commuters who pass by the many Old Chang Kee outlets near MRT stations and town centres can easily whip out their CashCards and pay.

Says Mr Lim: “Our quick service kiosks and cashless payments... they are a natural fit.”