Minister-in-Charge of the Smart Nation initiative Vivian Balakrishnan updated new developments in Singapore's quest to become a smart nation.

Get your CPF lump sum & Edusave Award funds via PayNow

In his speech during the Committee of Supply (COS) Debate on Thursday, Mar 1, Vivian announced that eligible CPF members over 55 years old can withdraw their lump sum via PayNow from Mar 26 onwards.

Withdrawing the CPF lump sum will not only be a few taps away, it is also much faster as the funds will be transferred within the same day rather than the current turnaround time of five days.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) will also be piloting the disbursement of Edusave Awards funds via PayNow - to Institute of Technical Education students (ITE) in April and polytechnic students in September this year.

This is definitely more efficient than the current practice which is to attend the ceremony, wait for an hour to go up on stage, go home and find some time to bank a cheque.

Besides getting CPF lump sum and Edusave Award funds via PayNow, business transactions can be made easier via PayNow Corporate too.

Starting from this year, businesses can link their bank accounts to their unique entity numbers (UENs) with PayNow Corporate. Businesses can also make transactions via PayNow, that also include merchants paying merchants and consumers paying merchants for their purchases via PayNow. 

What is PayNow?

For those who have not heard of PayNow, it links your bank account to your mobile number and NRIC number.

With this, you can make bank transfers as long as you know the recipient's mobile number or NRIC number, instead of the usual bank account number.

DBS Bank/POSB, Citibank, HSBC, Maybank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, and UOB are all participating banks of PayNow. That means you can transfer money to accounts of different banks too.

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Other updates to make going cashless easy for Singaporeans

Minister Balakrishnan also mentioned NETS and EZ-Link are working together to allow NETS terminals to accept EZ-Link transactions and vice-versa.

This means in the near future you can use your EZ-Link card to make purchases are more retail outlets.

The Government will also be promoting SG QR code which will be a national QR code standard to increase consumers' convenience.

He also emphasised the intent of the Government's effort on going cashless at the start of his speech:

"... we are not going cashless for the sake of its own sake and we are certainly not doing it for tax collection".

You can watch the entire speech on Singapore’s progress towards a Smart Nation here: