New council to lead Singapore's e-payments initiative

The board will consist of 20 leaders from businesses, banks and trade groups.

A new payments council, comprised of 20 leaders from banks, payment service providers, businesses and trade groups, has been established by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

According to a MAS press release, the council is key to a series of projects towards "realising the vision of an e-payments society in Singapore."

Duties of the council include overseeing the development of seamless payments solutions like PayNow, supporting the introduction and rollout of unified point-of-sale terminals at merchants, and introducing new payments legislation to protect consumer interests and facilitate innovative payment solutions.

The council will also serve as a body to encourage collaborations in the industry, promote interoperability across e-payments products, develop strategies to adopt e-payments, and make policy recommendations to MAS.

The Payments Council will be chaired by MAS managing director Ravi Menon.

Menon said, “We have many good e-payment solutions in Singapore. We need to make them
more inter-operable and better integrate them with individual and business use cases so that
more people will adopt e-payments. The Payments Council brings together the various parties that can help achieve this. Our mission is to make e-payments simple, seamless, and secure for all Singaporeans.”