Our e-payment system is still quite fragmented in Singapore.

My friends told me that China is advanced in e-payments. Many people pay using AliPay or WeChat Pay. They make small payments with their mobile phones.

China has 200 times the population of Singapore. If they can make e-payment work, why can't Singapore. There is something seriously wrong with our approach.

We must understand the problem, in order to find out the solution. The problems faced in Singapore are:

a) The regulator, Monetary Authority of Singapore, refuses to take the lead and responsibility.
b) Each of the major banks wants to set up their eco-system, instead of joining an industry wide system
c) The merchants find it difficult to install separate devices to connect to different systems.
d) There is the paranoid fear about security. We can set a small limit for the amount that is transferred, so any risk of fraud or failure is quite small.

The solution is for MAS to take the lead. They can appoint one or more aggregators to connect to the merchants. The merchant join one aggregator and can handle transactions with any customer. There is already a clearing system, called FAST, that is working well.  This can handle the back end processing.

I hope that MAS will now come forward to take the lead.