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SINGAPORE: Two thousand unified point-of-sale (POS) terminals will be installed at more than 650 stores belonging to the Dairy Farm Group Singapore this year.
The retail group, in partnership with NETS and United Overseas Bank (UOB), will install the payment terminals at its Cold Storage, Market Place, Jasons, Giant, 7-Eleven and Guardian Health and Beauty stores, following a successful pilot at two stores last November, according to the press release by Dairy Farm and NETS on Thursday (May 4).
The unified POS system supports a comprehensive range of payment modes – NETS, NETS FlashPay, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay, UOB Mighty Pay, and EZ-Link in addition to credit and debit cards. Dairy Farm’s co-brand card – the UOB Delight card – as well as its Tap For More loyalty programme via the PAssion card have also been integrated into the system, they added.
This represents one of the largest deployments of unified POS terminals in Singapore, and the terminal is touted to enable a reduction of 9-11 seconds in the time needed at checkout counters. This represents productivity savings of 106 hours a day for all the stores, both parties said.
Close-up look at the UPOS terminal. (Photo: Dairy Farm, NETS)
The collaboration is also in line with the country’s Smart Nation push to tap on technology to enable a cashless society. Specifically, it will accelerate the retail sector’s transition from using paper-based instruments to adopting electronic platforms that promote efficiency and security, the press release said.
UOB’s head of Card and Payments in Singapore Choo Wan Sim added that by the end of 2017, all the bank’s POS terminals will be unified POS one.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about how older HDB flats are an unwise purchasing decision.
Sure, the possibility of outliving your HDB flat is a good argument for an early death.
But whether you’ve already shelled out the cash for an old flat, or are living in an old flat your parents bought decades ago, there are still ways you can squeeze a bit more cash out of your home to boost your retirement, before the lease finally runs out, such as the following.
Rent out rooms in your flat
Since the resale value of your flat will fall on the tail end of its lease, if you intend to hold on to it in the long-term, the main way you can monetise it is by renting out the rooms or, if you have alternative accommodation arrangements, to rent out the entire flat while you live somewhere else.
If you don’t mind living with others, you can earn a considerable amount even if you continue to live in the flat. For instance, I have a friend who lives in one of those two-storey maisonettes in a central mature estate, and earns around $24,000 a year renting out the spare rooms.
Sell the flat in under 10 years
For now, the demand for older HDB flats in attractive mature estates remains high, thanks to young couples who are willing to pay a premium for a good location and a bigger flat.
So barring a property market crash, you might still be able to get a decent price on your flat-but only if you sell it before it can get much older, say in under 10 years. Flats between 20 and 40 years old tend to not to experience huge falls in price.
It is when the flat reaches the age of 65 that it experiences the sharpest decline in value-or at least, that’s what analysts have gleaned from past buyer behaviour. If you haven’t sold your flat by then, you’re probably better off living in it for the rest of its (or your) life.
So why would you want to shell out a huge downpayment on an old flat, only to sell it in 10 years’ time? Well, some couples might want to live in a more central location to save time and energy commuting when their kids are young and need to be ferried to/from school and childcare. Others may not want to wait years for a BTO and decide to go for a resale flat, so why not one in a better area?
Apply for the Silver Housing Scheme
Selling your flat and downgrading is one way to use your home to fund your retirement. This gets complicated when you’re living in an old flat, as you won’t be able to sell it for much towards the end of the lease.
The Silver Housing Scheme enables you to sell your flat and buy a smaller, cheaper one.
You will have to make sure the value of your existing flat hasn’t fallen to the point where the proceeds aren’t sufficient to buy you a new one. Some or all of what’s left of the sale proceeds will be paid into your CPF account. You will also receive a cash bonus of up to $20,000 depending on your income.
You must be aged above age 55, own a bigger HDB flat and have a monthly household income of under $12,000 to qualify.
Pray your flat will be selected for SERS
If your flat is selected for SERS, you’ve hit the jackpot. You get to trade in your aging flat for a brand new one with a 99-year lease, located not far from your previous home. You’ll also receive cash from the government.
However, the government has warned that not old HDB flats will qualify for SERS (Selective En bloc Redevelopment Scheme). Whether yours will qualify depends on a combination of luck and smarts in picking the right property. For instance, you want to pick a flat in a central location that’s likely to experience escalating land values. Flats that are in lower-density buildings also tend to be more likely to get selected for en bloc.
This is definitely not a strategy you want to bank your life savings on. But if you’re already in the situation where you’ve got an old flat on your hands, you might want to start believing in the power of prayer.
The article first appeared on MoneySmart.
MoneySmart.sg is Singapore’s leading personal finance portal, and aims to help people maximise their money with powerful tools and engaging content.
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Just a little under a year ago, Min Junqian was an unknown art student in China’s eastern province of Shandong, dreaming of becoming a star and hitting the big time.
Fast-forward a year and the 23-year-old is a member of Acrush, China’s first all-girl “boy band”, which released its debut single last week, but already has hundreds of thousands of fans.
“Our fathers’ generation still holds the idea that girls should dress in a feminine manner, something I was never comfortable with,” Min told Reuters. “I just like to dress in a unisex way.”
Min wasn’t expecting to be picked when she went to the band’s audition last year.
But her boyish appearance and androgynous style were exactly what entertainment startup Zhejiang Huati Culture Communication, backed by Tencent Holdings, was looking for.
Marketed as a pop band that encourages girls to pursue their own identities and shake up female conventions, Acrush has won more than 749,000 followers on Chinese social networking site Weibo.
Acrush goes against the grain in China’s still-evolving music industry, where girl bands are marketed as sweet young things to appeal to a male audience.
“I left home when I was young,” said the band’s lead singer, 21-year-old Peng Xichen.
“To comfort my parents, I told them my boyish appearance would keep me safe.”
Some fans, most of them millennials born after the mid-1990s, have called the band members their “husbands”.
Some have sent love letters, which the band cannot answer, bound by contract.
“We are not allowed to disclose our gender preferences or have romantic relationships,” said Lu Keran, the band’s leader.
From day one, Zhejiang Huati has created individual identities for the women.
Min is supposed to be the band’s comedian, while Peng is a “gentle romantic”, and the 21-year-old Lu is portrayed as an energetic dancer with a sunny disposition.
She wears long-sleeved outfits to shield from the public eye a dragon tattoo on her arm, and is reluctant to talk about it, saying only, “I did it when I was an ignorant girl.”
But she did admit to sometimes dressing in pink and behaving like a little girl.
The Chinese blogosphere is ablaze with questions about Acrush’s leanings.
Asked if they supported feminism and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, the band said they had no idea what the abbreviation LGBT stood for.
“We’re just ‘handsome’ girls,” said Min.
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The ‘ice’, cannabis, Erimin-5 and Ecstasy tablets were found hidden in boxes of washing powder, flour and cereal.
SINGAPORE: Authorities intercepted a “sizeable quantity” of “ice”, cannabis and Erimin-5 that arrived at Woodlands Checkpoint in the guise of washing powder, flour and cereal, the Immigration and Checkpoint Authority (ICA) said on Wednesday (May 3).
At about 10.40pm on Tuesday, officers at Woodlands Checkpoint stopped a Singapore-registered car, driven by a lone Singaporean man, for further checks.
They found three plastic bags containing different boxes in the car. Upon further inspection, they discovered Erimin-5 tablets that were hidden in a box of washing powder.
The Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) was called in, and its officers found about 3.1kg of methamphetamine or “ice”, 2kg of cannabis, 1,700 Erimin-5 tablets and 60 Ecstasy tablets, ICA and CNB said in a joint news release on Wednesday.
The 35-year-old driver of the car was arrested, they added.
CNB followed up with an operation to arrest those suspected of being the intended recipients of the drugs.
Three suspected drug traffickers were arrested around Woodlands Avenue 4 at about 1.10am on Wednesday.
In the car of one of the suspects, a 32-year-old Singaporean man, CNB officers recovered 17 Ecstasy tablets, 8g of “ice”, S$22,800 in cash, a digital weighing scale and numerous empty plastic sachets.
They also found S$12,250 in cash in the car belonging to the other two suspects, a 27-year-old Singaporean man and 24-year-old Singaporean woman, they said. Small amounts of ice, ketamine and cannabis were seized from the 27-year-old man’s Pasir Ris home.
At about 5.35am the same day, CNB officers arrested another suspected drug trafficker, a 25-year-old Singaporean man, near Orchard Towers.
Investigations into all five suspects are ongoing.
The penalty for trafficking more than 250g of methamphetamine – enough to feed the addictions of about 185 abusers for a week – or more than 500g of cannabis is death.
