[cflee]

In Singapore, direct debit is known as GIRO[1], and practically any large organisation supports or prefers it as a payment option. Companies of all sizes take cheques, fewer take cash or NETS in person. Credit cards and one-off e-banking bill payments are often supported by the larger companies but not always. In fact, my insurance company outright refuses to take credit cards, and tries their very best to push customers onto GIRO. [2]

GIRO authorisation ("Direct Debit Authorisation") until recently was fully paper, often on carbonised forms with manual signature, but some of the banks have started offering electronic authorisation recently.

People here tend to fall into three camps: the cash/NETS (local debit card) folks who queue up at the post office or AXS machines to pay, those who do one-off bill payment on e-banking, and those who use GIRO/credit card. It depends on how comfortable people are with technology and e-banking in particular, as well as how skeptical they are of the billing organisation automatically charging the right amount.

[1] http://www.abs.org.sg/financial_giro.php

[2] http://www.aia.com.sg/en/customer-support/premium-payment-ch...