Taking payments in your Singapore hair salon: PayNow, NETS, cards and what each really costs

Walk into almost any small hair salon in a Singapore heartland estate and the payment options are sitting on the counter: a laminated PayNow QR code, a NETS terminal, and a drawer that still sees plenty of cash. Each of those takes money from the same client for the same haircut, and each costs the salon a completely different amount, from literally nothing to well over 3% once a foreign credit card gets involved. The cheapest payments setup for a Singapore salon is less about picking one magic provider and more about knowing which rail each payment runs on, what each rail charges, and which published numbers you can actually hold a provider to.

One thing to be clear about up front, because this blog belongs to ViteUneCoupe: ViteUneCoupe processes no payments at all. It is the booking layer, a free online booking system for hair salons with 0% commission on everything you earn, and it never touches the money. Your PayNow QR, your NETS terminal and your card rates stay exactly as they are, whichever booking tool fills the calendar. Nothing below is a pitch for our own processing, because there is none.

Every figure in this guide was checked in October 2026 on the provider's, bank's or government agency's own pages, in Singapore dollars unless stated otherwise, and where a rate is not published we say so instead of guessing.

PayNow: the near-free rail on your counter

PayNow moves money instantly between Singapore bank accounts using a mobile number, NRIC or UEN, and for the receiving salon it is as close to free as payments get. The list prices exist but are waived: UOB prices incoming PayNow transactions at S$0.20 each, waived until 31 December 2028, and OCBC's business pricing guide shows the same S$0.20 per received transaction with the waiver extended to 31 December 2028 (both checked in October 2026). A static QR code on the counter, pointing at your business account via your UEN, therefore costs you nothing per transaction today, and at the list price a S$68 cut would still only cost S$0.20 to receive, not a percentage.

Two honest caveats. First, the waivers are promotions on top of a non-zero list price, not a law of nature: note the dates, and expect your bank to tell you if they change. Second, the real cost of PayNow is workflow, not fees. Someone has to glance at the notification to confirm the transfer actually went through before the client leaves, the reference the client types is whatever they feel like typing, and reconciling forty PayNow receipts against the day's appointments is manual work your terminal statement used to do for you. For low-volume, high-value moments it is unbeatable, which is why it is the standard way Singapore salons collect booking deposits; what you may keep when a client cancels is covered in our guide to cancellation policies and deposits for Singapore hair salons.

One more condition worth knowing before you get creative: OCBC's PayNow terms state that a business may not impose a surcharge or similar charge on customers who choose to pay by PayNow. The sensible route, as with every rail in this article, is the one our guide to setting hair salon prices in Singapore recommends: build payment costs into the price list like rent and colour stock, and stop thinking about them at the till.

If your counter is collecting a zoo of QR codes, the SGQR standard exists precisely for that: one label combining multiple payment schemes, co-owned by MAS and IMDA, so the client finds PayNow and the wallets on a single sticker.

NETS: the heartland default, and what it costs

NETS is the domestic debit network Singaporean clients have tapped for decades, and in heartland salons it is still the default electronic payment for the generation that does not scan QR codes. NETS does not make a simple public rate card easy to find, so the best openly published reference is a government one: Enterprise Singapore's Heartlands Go Digital programme sheet, which lists NETS's standard (non-promotional) pricing as a terminal subscription of up to S$60 per month, 0.8% per NETS and NETS QR transaction, 0.8% to 1.8% for overseas wallets and foreign cards, and 1.99% to 3.5% for credit cards run through the same terminal, with NETS SGQR deployment itself free and QR payments at 0.8% (sheet updated June 2024, still published and checked in October 2026). Treat those as the shape of the deal, not a quote: NETS confirms your exact rates when you sign up, so get them in writing per payment type before you commit.

The structure matters more than the decimals. A NETS debit tap costs you a predictable 0.8%, under a third of most credit card rates, and your clients already know how to use it. The expensive line on a NETS terminal is the same as everywhere else: scheme credit cards, and above all foreign-issued ones, which is worth remembering in a tourist-facing Orchard or CBD location in a way it rarely matters in Toa Payoh.

Card terminals and aggregators with published SGD pricing

If you want Visa and Mastercard on the counter without a bank merchant account, the aggregator model gives you one published rate, no monthly fee and a terminal you buy outright. Two providers publish full Singapore rate cards, which makes them useful benchmarks even if you sign with someone else:

Sources: Stripe's Singapore pricing page and HitPay's Singapore pricing page, both checked in October 2026. Grab itself does not publish a standalone merchant rate card for GrabPay, so the verifiable numbers are the ones aggregators publish for it.

Notice the two traps hiding in that table. First, running PayNow through a platform turns a free rail into a percentage: the same transfer that costs S$0.00 on your own bank QR costs 1.3% through Stripe. Platforms earn that fee with automatic reconciliation and refunds, which may be worth it at volume, but know that you are paying for software convenience, not for the payment itself. Second, in-person card rates in Singapore are high by international standards: 2.5% to 3.4% on every tap is real money on a S$180 colour bill, which is exactly why the PayNow sticker and the NETS terminal have not gone anywhere.

What the mix costs: a deliberately hypothetical salon

The following is invented to show the arithmetic, not a quote. Take a salon putting S$12,000 a month through the till across roughly 200 payments:

• All direct PayNow to the salon's own account: S$0 in transaction fees under the current bank waivers.
• All NETS debit at 0.8% plus a S$60 terminal subscription: about S$156 a month.
• All domestic cards in person at 2.5% + S$0.50: about S$400 a month, roughly S$4,800 a year.
• All domestic cards at 3.4% + S$0.50: about S$508 a month, over S$6,000 a year.

No real salon sits at any of those corners, and refusing cards entirely costs bookings from clients who want to pay how they always pay. But the direction is clear: every payment you can politely steer toward the QR code or the NETS tap instead of a scheme credit card is margin kept, and the gap between the best and worst published card rate is itself worth a quote round. All the prices above are quoted excluding GST, as terminal and platform fees generally are; whether that GST is a cost or a claimable input for you depends on your registration status, which our guide to GST for hair salons in Singapore walks through.

Cash: still doing quiet work in the heartlands

No fee table covers the drawer, and it would be dishonest to pretend it is empty. In neighbourhood salons a meaningful share of clients, especially older regulars, still pay cash for a S$15 to S$30 cut, and cash carries no processing fee at all. Its costs are operational instead: a float to manage, a trip to the deposit machine, no automatic record for your bookkeeping, and nothing to reconcile against the appointment book except your own notes. The practical stance for most salons is neither to chase cash out nor to depend on it: keep taking it gladly, record it as carefully as the electronic rails record themselves, and let the QR code absorb the growth.

Processing fees, software subscriptions, marketplace commissions: three different bills

The reason payment costs confuse salon owners is that three unrelated charges all show up as percentages and all get called "fees":

1. Payment processing pays for moving money: the 0.8% NETS rate, the 2.5% card rate, the S$0.20 PayNow list price. It exists whoever books the appointment.
2. Software subscriptions pay for tools: your booking system, your POS. A subscription is a fixed price for a function, and the honest way to compare tools is laid out fee by fee in our guide to the real cost of salon software in Singapore.
3. Marketplace commissions pay for demand: a percentage or per-booking fee for clients a platform sends you. That is a marketing cost wearing a payments costume, and our comparison of direct bookings versus marketplaces for Singapore hair salons treats it on its own terms.

Bundled products deliberately blur the three: a "free" booking tool earning its living on the processing line, or a marketplace whose commission includes card costs. None of that is illegitimate, but you can only judge each layer by unbundling it: would you choose this processor at these rates on its own merits, and can you leave the software without ripping out your payments? Our Singapore comparison of hair salon booking software asks exactly those questions product by product.

Where ViteUneCoupe fits, and deliberately does not

ViteUneCoupe sits entirely on layer two, and only there. The free plan gives your salon unlimited online bookings 24/7 with 0% commission, permanently, plus your own booking page, a services catalogue with your prices in your own words, per-stylist schedules, the calendar and a client database where Singapore +65 numbers work fine. The Standard plan, from 29 € excluding tax per month with no commitment, adds automatic confirmation, reminder and thank-you emails plus ICS calendar sync. Billing is in euros, so the Singapore dollar amount on your card statement moves with the exchange rate and your bank may add a small foreign-transaction fee; we would rather say that plainly than let you find it on a statement. Reminders are email only, with no SMS and no WhatsApp on any plan.

And on the subject of this article: there is no payment processing, no POS, no PayNow integration, no card on file and no deposit collection. Your PayNow QR, your NETS terminal, your aggregator rates and your cash drawer keep working exactly as they do today, and the booking layer neither adds a basis point to any of them nor takes one. An anti no-show protection by bank-card hold is coming soon in the Standard + Anti No-Show plan at 49 € excluding tax per month; until it ships, treat it as an announcement, not a feature.

The questions to get in writing before you sign

Copy these into an email to any terminal or payments provider and keep the answers:

1. My exact rate per payment type: NETS debit, NETS QR, PayNow through your platform, domestic Visa and Mastercard in person, international cards, keyed or online, in Singapore dollars, GST treatment stated?
2. Terminal cost over a full year: rental or purchase, installation, any telco or connectivity fee, and the early-termination amount in dollars?
3. Any monthly account fee, minimum monthly charge, statement fee or compliance fee?
4. Chargeback fee, and is the original processing fee returned when I refund a client?
5. How fast do funds reach my account for each rail, and what does faster settlement cost?
6. Contract length, auto-renewal and notice period?
7. If I take PayNow through your platform, what exactly am I getting for the percentage that my own bank QR does not give me for free?

Frequently asked questions

What is the cheapest way for a hair salon to take payments in Singapore?

A PayNow QR code pointing at the salon's own bank account. The list price to receive is S$0.20 per transaction at UOB and OCBC, and both banks currently waive it until 31 December 2028 (checked on their own pages in October 2026), so receiving costs nothing today. The trade-off is manual work: confirming each transfer arrived and reconciling receipts against appointments yourself.

Is PayNow really free for a Singapore salon to receive?

Per transaction, effectively yes for now: the banks' S$0.20 list price for incoming PayNow is waived, at UOB and OCBC until 31 December 2028. It is a promotional waiver on a real list price, not a permanent guarantee, so note the dates. PayNow taken through a payments platform is different: Stripe charges 1.3% and HitPay from 0.4% for the same transfer, in exchange for automatic reconciliation and refunds.

How much does a NETS terminal cost a hair salon?

NETS does not publish a simple public rate card, but Enterprise Singapore's Heartlands Go Digital sheet lists standard NETS pricing at up to S$60 a month for the terminal, 0.8% per NETS and NETS QR transaction, and 1.99% to 3.5% when credit cards run through the same terminal (sheet updated June 2024, checked in October 2026). Confirm your exact rates in writing when you sign: the published figures are a reference, not your quote.

What do card payments cost per tap in a Singapore salon?

The two fully published Singapore rate cards, checked in October 2026: HitPay charges 2.5% + S$0.50 for domestic cards in person and Stripe 3.4% + S$0.50, with international cards costing more at both. On a S$180 colour bill that is S$5 to S$7 per payment, which is why steering routine payments toward PayNow or NETS debit at 0.8% protects real margin over a year.

Does ViteUneCoupe process payments or connect to PayNow or NETS?

No. ViteUneCoupe is the booking layer only: free unlimited online bookings with 0% commission, your booking page, schedules and client database, with automatic emails and calendar sync on the Standard plan. It does not process cards, integrate with PayNow or NETS, store card details or collect deposits, so your existing payment setup continues unchanged beside it. A bank-card hold against no-shows is coming soon in the Standard + Anti No-Show plan at 49 € excluding tax per month.