Southeast Asian Ride-hailing giant and superapp Grab has integrated Web3 services onto its platform, providing users with a Web3 wallet within the app itself.
The wallet is hosted on Polygon, and currently supports digital vouchers and collectibles from the SG Pitstop Pack. However, Grab has indicated that it is looking to expand the wallet's range of supported assets and experiences in the future.
Additionally, while most wallets are secured with a private key, Grab has opted for a more user-friendly and accessible approach, and allows users to secure their wallet with a PIN password. There is also an account recovery system based on questions and answers.
The vouchers themselves are NFTs, and are an example of purpose-bound money. These NFTs can be used for payments at various merchants across Singapore, including non-Web3 native companies like KOI, Jumbo Seafood, and Mount Faber Leisure Group among others.
An anonymous crypto investor that Coinlive spoke to praised Grab for the initiative, saying that Grab's Web3 initiatives are "a positive step for the industry", since they increase adoption and exposure to the Web3 space, and expressed hope that more initiatives would be announced in the future.
However, he also noted that there were some aspects of the new initiative that left more to be desired.
"Payments and everyday usage is one of the biggest issues within the industry that needs to be solved. While this move by Grab will certainly help, this initiative only includes NFTs, which are still quite niche. I feel that Grab could have included payments instead of NFTs, but for now, let's just see what comes next."
The SG Pitstop Pack is an industry campaign between several companies, including ride-hailing giant Grab, stablecoin issuer StraitsX, as well as local bank UOB.
All these companies are participants within the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Project Orchid, which aims to test the feasibility of Purpose-bound money.
Stablecoin provider StraitsX was the tech provider behind the project, and the SG Pitstop pack is essentially a pack of purpose-bound money vouchers. The vouchers themselves are issued by StraitsX, and SGD value is wrapped as XSGD, one of StraitsX's stablecoins.
The SG Pitstop Pack can be bought on the Fave app, another fintech payments provider based in Singapore. The pack can then be redeemed on the Grab app, and users can then use the vouchers at participating merchants.
Earlier this year, Grab had signed up to be part of a pilot study with the Monetary Authority of Singapore surrounding the use of digital assets. These assets would include Central Bank Digital Currencies, tokenised bank deposits, and stablecoins.
Aside from the SG Pitstop Pack, they have also tested escrow arrangements for purpose-bound money with Amazon and Fazz, another Southeast Asian financial services firm .
Additionally, Grab had tested digital vouchers with StraitsX before, during the Singapore Fintech Festival 2022. During that test, 5000 trial participants were issued vouchers through a blockchain e-wallet app, and used them to make purchases at selected F&B outlets.
They have also partnered with Triple-A, a licensed crypto payments company in Singapore, to enable crypto investments for TransCrypt users using GrabPay.
Grab currently has 180 million users, and maintains over 34.9 million monthly transacted users.
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