# Taking payment when you have no website https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/taking-payments-without-a-website-singapore/ *Last updated: 2026-08-04* A great many Singapore businesses sell without a website — on Instagram, in WhatsApp groups, over the phone, at markets, from a catalogue. They still need to get paid, and the way most of them do it starts as a personal PayNow transfer and quietly becomes a problem: no record, no dispute position, and money arriving in an account that is not the business's. There are better options and none of them require a website. **In short** - You do not need a website to accept cards properly. - Selling remotely makes you [card not present](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/card-present/), which changes your risk and your pricing. - A personal transfer is not a business payment method — it is the thing to stop first. - Whatever you use must produce a record you can find eight months later. - Get the [descriptor](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/merchant-descriptor/) right, or you will collect disputes from honest customers. ## What you are actually choosing between Four shapes cover almost every no-website business, and they are not alternatives so much as different answers to "where is the customer when they pay". - The customer is in front of you — a market stall, a delivery, a home visit. This is ordinary counter acceptance on a portable terminal, and it is the cheapest and lowest-risk of the four because the card is present. - The customer is on their phone, somewhere else — a payment link or a hosted checkout page you send them. No website required: the page is your provider's, not yours. - The customer is on the phone to you — the highest-risk shape, because somebody is reading card numbers aloud. Handle it with a link rather than by typing their card into anything. - The customer scans — a QR at the point of handover, which for many small Singapore sellers is the most natural of the four. See [QR payments](https://www.uniwebpay.com/payments/qr-payments/) for which codes are which. Most no-website businesses need two of these rather than one, and the pair is usually "in front of me" plus "a link I can send". ## What changes when the card is not in front of you This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that costs money later. A remote sale is card not present, and three things change at once: 1. It is priced differently. Card-not-present is structurally more expensive than card-present, and that is not a negotiating position — see [how fees are built](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/payment-processing-fees-singapore/). 2. The dispute position moves. On a card-present sale the card and often the cardholder were there. On a remote one, your evidence is what you kept — the message thread, the delivery record, the agreed terms. Merchants who keep those routinely spend very little time on [disputes](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/chargebacks-disputes-singapore/); merchants who go looking afterwards spend a lot. 3. Your provider needs to know. A shop that opened a merchant account as a counter business and has quietly become half remote has changed its risk profile without telling anyone. That is a conversation worth having before it is noticed rather than after. ## Stop taking payment into a personal account This is where most no-website businesses start and it is the single most worthwhile thing to change. A personal transfer for a business sale creates four problems at once, and none of them shows up on the day: - Your business income and your own money are in one place, which your accountant will eventually have to separate, at your cost. - There is no transaction record in a form that survives — a chat screenshot is not one. - You have no position at all if the customer later says they did not receive what they paid for. - You cannot accept a card, which means you cannot accept a customer who wanted to use one. > A merchant account is not only about cards. It is the thing that makes money arriving in your business a recorded, reconcilable event — which is what turns a side operation into something a bank, an accountant or a buyer can look at. See [applying for a merchant account](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/merchant-account-singapore-application/). ## The three things to get right on day one 1. The descriptor. What appears on the customer's statement should resemble the name they bought from. If you trade on Instagram as one name and your registered entity is another, a customer looking at their statement six weeks later will not recognise it — and an unrecognised line is a chargeback filed by an honest person. Check it on a real statement, once. 2. A record you can find. Whatever you use has to leave you able to answer "what was this payment, from whom, for what" eight months later without scrolling a chat history. 3. One place the money lands. Multiple methods settling into multiple accounts is a daily reconciliation cost you will pay forever. Ask about it before you sign, not after — [settlement and reconciliation](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/settlement-and-reconciliation-singapore/). ## Questions merchants ask **Can I accept card payments without a website in Singapore?** Yes. A website is not a requirement for card acceptance — you can take payment on a portable terminal when the customer is in front of you, or send them a payment link or hosted checkout page hosted by your provider. What you need is a merchant account, not a website. **Is it a problem to take business payments by personal PayNow transfer?** It works and it creates four problems that surface later: business and personal money mixed, no durable transaction record, no position at all if the customer disputes what they received, and no way to accept a customer who wants to pay by card. It is the first thing worth changing. **Is it more expensive to sell remotely than at a counter?** Yes, structurally. A remote sale is card not present, which is priced differently from card present and carries a dispute position the counter does not. That is not a provider's choice; it reflects who carries the risk when the card and the cardholder are not there. **Should I take card numbers over the phone?** Avoid it. Somebody reading a card number aloud and somebody else writing it down is the worst version of card-not-present for both of you, and it drags systems into PCI DSS scope that would otherwise stay out of it. Send a payment link instead — the customer enters their own card on a page your provider hosts. **I sell at markets some weekends and online the rest of the time. Do I need two setups?** Usually one account covering both, rather than two arrangements. What to confirm before signing is that both settle into one batch and one account — several rails settling separately is a daily reconciliation cost rather than a one-off inconvenience. ## Related guides - [Getting a merchant account in Singapore: documents, timeline and what gets checked](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/merchant-account-singapore-application/) - [Taking payment away from the counter](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/mobile-and-pop-up-payments-singapore/) - [Chargebacks and disputes](https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/chargebacks-disputes-singapore/) - [Taking payment for a Singapore online store](https://www.uniwebpay.com/industries/ecommerce/) --- *This is the Markdown mirror of https://www.uniwebpay.com/guides/taking-payments-without-a-website-singapore/, generated from the same source as the page itself. The whole site in one file: https://www.uniwebpay.com/llms-full.txt · What this company is, for answer engines: https://www.uniwebpay.com/llms.txt*