Singapore plans e-money set up by 2008

Singapore plans e-money set up by 2008
REUTERS

DEC 19: Singapore hopes to transform electronic money into legal tender by 2008 and is working on an island-wide infrastructure to support the system, a senior official revealed on Tuesday.

"We envision that the money will be in the form of electronic pulses stored in smart chips," Low Siang Kok, a director of the Board of Commissioners of Currency Singapore (BCCS), said.

"With present technology, there are so many devices we can use, from mobile phones, to hand-held computers. So long as they have chips embedded, these are possible means of transferring money around."

E-money will do away with the need for physical storage, transportation and protection for hard cash.

The government will set up an electronic legal tender system to ensure the virtual money is recognised as payment alongside the notes and coins that the BCCS now issues.

"The cost of handling physical cash is high and is escalating. Our way of keeping costs down is to look for an alternative in electronic tender," Low said.

The technology to support an E-money system already exists in the form of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) commonly used in mobile phones. But BCCS wants the system to reach every corner of the city state.

The BCCS is working with the Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS) to set up the necessary infrastructure and will look at similar projects on the go in the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia.

NETS, formed by five major local banks, put in place a Singapore-wide electronic payment system in 1986 allowing card holders to pay for purchases via direct debits from their accounts.