The setting up of the Payments Council is part of a series of initiatives MAS is taking towards realising the vision of an e-payments society in Singapore. This includes facilitating 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 safeguard consumer interests and facilitate innovative payment solutions.

The Payments Council will formally bring together both the providers and users of payment services in Singapore. It will encourage collaboration within the payments industry, promote interoperability among e-payments solutions, develop strategies to drive the pervasive adoption of e-payments, and advise and make recommendations to MAS on payments related policies.

The Payments Council will be chaired by Mr Ravi Menon, Managing Director, MAS. Mr 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.”

MAS also issued its summary of responses to the feedback on the public consultation on the Payments Council. Most respondents welcomed the formation of a Payments Council as an industry coordination body that fosters innovation and collaboration in the payments industry. The summary of the responses can be found here. A detailed response to the feedback received on the proposed payments framework consultation will be published in November 2017.