Taxi hailing company Grab launched peer-to-peer fund transfer services in Singapore, its first step towards a goal of moving into the wider mobile payments space.

In a statement, the company said it aimed to be the number one universal mobile payments system in the region.

Customers in Singapore can transfer funds to one another using the Grab app from this week, while the company is set to develop and launch a full GrabPay service – which will be a general mobile wallet able to process payments to a range of merchants – during Q4 2017.

Grab said it will initially target acceptance in the 1,000 merchants in the country primarily dealing in cash. It pointed specifically to opportunities in the retail, food and entertainment sectors.

The company’s move into payments will see it compete with the likes of Chinese m-commerce giant Alipay, and Singtel – Singapore’s largest mobile operator by connections – for a share of the country’s mobile wallet market.

Grab’s ride-hailing app clocked up 55 million downloads and is used by almost three million users a day across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

“Cashless payments in Singapore is still quite fragmented,” head of GrabPay Jason Thompson said: “Mobile payments is more infrastructure-lite, and as one of the most frequently used consumer apps, we believe Grab can drive mass adoption of mobile payments in Singapore and across Southeast Asia.

“We have a stake in educating and bringing local communities into the cashless future, and are open to working with public and private sector organisations to enable this.”