Today, financial services activities are characterised by speed and continuous innovation. The ability to leverage infocomm to innovate and create new products, processes and services has become the prerequisite to being a sustainable premier financial centre.
IDA aims to turn Singapore into a trusted gateway to the emerging Asian market and an innovative hub for financial services, powered by infocomm.
As a trusted gateway, Singapore will be where global financial services institutions manage key knowledge activities and orchestrate the delivery of financial services to serve their regional customers. As an innovative hub, Singapore will be where companies leverage infocomm to develop and deploy innovative financial services to better engage their customers.
To that end, IDA has put in place several programmes to further entrench Singapore's reputation as a trusted gateway and to create an environment for financial services to test and deploy innovative technologies.
To catalyse transactions across all sectors of the economy and potentially create new market spaces that were previously unserved, IDA has put in place the Next-Generation Electronic Payments programme. The programme aims to drive innovation in electronic payment solutions and encourage the deployment of innovative infrastructural pieces that provide convenient electronic payments over different channels to users and businesses. IDA will also encourage the creation of value-added services that can spur online transactions or bring greater convenience to end users.
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Specification for Contactless e-Purse Application (CEPAS)
CEPAS, Specification for Contactless e-Purse Application is a significant milestone for Singapore's micro-payment landscape. Developed by IDA with the Cards & Personal Identification Technical Committee (CPTIC) under the Singapore IT Standards Committee (ITSC), Network for Electronic Transfers Singapore Pte Ltd (NETS), and EZ-Link Pte Ltd, CEPAS was gazetted by SPRING Singapore in January 2006 as SS 518.
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Contactless POS Deployment Initiative
The Contactless POS Deployment Initiative is part of the Next-Generation Electronic Payments Programme. The main objective of the initiative is to promote e-payment adoption in cash-based segments and to catalyze the deployment of NFC mobile payments in the future, by accelerating the deployment of CEPAS-compliant e-payment terminals. This initiative facilitates the adoption of e-payment by lowering the transaction costs to merchants by up to 50% compared to prevailing rates. In addition, merchants will enjoy waiver of setup fees and free terminal rental for at least a year.
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Government Agencies' Adoption of Contactless e-Payments
The Government Agencies' Adoption of Contactless e-Payments scheme is a continued effort from the Contactless POS Deployment Initiative. It is directed at government agencies with a large number of low-value cash transactions. The scheme aims to encourage contactless e-payment adoption within the public sector through the deployment of CEPAS-compliant terminals for the acceptance of payments using CEPAS cards, such as the ez-link, LTA concession and NETS FlashPay cards.
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Near Field Communication Payment and Mobile Services Initiative
With the deployment of a nationwide interoperable Near Field Communicaion (NFC) infrastructure for mobile payment services, consumers can how "tap and pay" for their purchases at more than 30,000 retail points and taxis using NFC-enabled mobile phones.
More than other industries, financial services industry depends on trust. With rising cyber-threats and pressures for regulatory compliance, the importance of trust as a competitive factor to a financial services hub cannot be understated. The
National Trust Framework
will focus on developing the "hard" and "soft" aspects of an infrastructure, namely in the areas of infrastructure development, manpower, education and regulation, to provide a trusted infocomm environment that supports the development of new services on Singapore's next-generation Infocomm Infrastructure.
Increased economic, market and regulatory pressures are requiring companies to publish information to a myriad of internal and external stakeholders in greater frequency and variety of formats. Facilitating the flow of information and reporting creates greater transparency and a more efficient capital market. IDA hopes to leverage infocomm and new electronic standards in corporate reporting such as the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to streamline corporate financial reporting process, thereby facilitating financial analysis and providing consumers with greater and faster access to financial information.
As part of i-Wealth Management programme, IDA aims to encourage the financial services industry to use infocomm to enable online collaboration and data aggregation, from front-end customer engagement to back office processing, so as to achieve a more efficient execution, disciplined risk management and enhanced delivery of wealth management services. IDA will engage the industry in identifying and driving the deployment of flagship infocomm projects that can deliver significant sector-wide benefits. One such key project that is currently being driven by IDA is the paperless fund management project which seeks to streamline and automate funds management processing in Singapore. IDA will also encourage industry collaboration to facilitate paperless insurance.
