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Everything About GovWallet, a New Digital Tool Created by the S’pore Government

2022-03-03 , 11:48 am

In a move that echoes Singapore’s vision of becoming a Smart Nation, a new digital tool allowing Singaporeans to receive government payouts easily has been developed.

Dubbed as GovWallet and developed by the Government Technology Agency (GovTech), this tool will be something quite useful for all Singaporeans.

So without further ado, here is everything you need to know about GovWallet and how it will benefit you.

Receiving Government Payouts By Face Scanning

GovWallet allows Singaporeans to retrieve government payouts in a few ways, including at selected ATMs by scanning their faces.

This is essential, especially since a large proportion of citizens are elderly. As such, GovWallet aims to allow Singaporeans who do not have bank accounts or smartphones to receive their money easily.

Another way to retrieve your money, involves GovWallet permitting the payouts to be received through mobile apps such as the GovTech’s LifeSG app.

LifeSG gives users access to government services, such as checking their Central Provident Fund (CPF) balances and applying for a passport.

Citizens can then use PayNow to transfer the government payouts from the LifeSG app to their bank accounts.

GovWallet is also expected to allow people to use the payouts to make Nets payments in stores soon, so you can receive the money and spend it.

GovCash

Previously, GovTech had developed the GovCash service which shared the same aim of disbursing payouts to those without bank accounts. It was progressively rolled out from November last year.

GovCash is powered by the GovWallet technology and allows people to withdraw government payouts from 500 OCBC Bank ATMs, even if they do not have an account with any bank.

The process has steps to verify the identities of those making the withdrawals, such as face scanning.

The payouts that can be withdrawn this way include the Workfare Income Supplement, the Workfare Special Payment and the Training Commitment Award.

No More Physical Payouts

Another benefit of GovWallet is that by giving payouts through ATMs or apps without using paper vouchers, there is no more hassle of distributing and collecting physical vouchers.

“What used to take multiple steps and even a visit to a service touch point can now be done any time, anywhere,” said GovTech, referring to how people collected payouts in the past.

The Smart Nation and Digital Government Group, which GovTech is a part of, said GovWallet was developed by bringing together various digital components such as identity management and payments.

This means that other agencies can incorporate GovWallet functions into new or existing applications without building their own.

“This, in turn, reduces duplication of development efforts and cost across the Government,” the group added.

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Integrated with Other Government Apps

Interconnecting other government apps for ease of information transfer, GovWallet can be easily integrated with existing apps, such as Singpass and the Health Promotion Board’s Healthy 365 app.

No confirmation was given on when Healthy 365 might be using GovWallet, but the app allows users to redeem electronic vouchers based on the number of steps they have walked.

As for other agencies using GovWallet, GovTech said the technology has “received interest from many organisations to be used in household and social assistance programmes, sector-specific relief programmes, and even staff recognition programmes”.

The Smart Nation and Digital Government Group added that “there is no one-size-fits-all tool that solves all our digital needs” and that it is working with various agencies to identify people’s pain points and develop digital tools to address different needs.

Making Payments with GovWallet

For instance, a tech system called RedeemSG is used to give out CDC Vouchers with fixed denominations. For less tech-savvy people, they can head down to community centres to print out the digital vouchers to use.

This function is not available in GovWallet, which taps an existing pool of merchants already on e-payment systems such as PayNow and in the future, Nets.

Users simply key in the amount spent at these merchants.

Currently, GovWallet allows government payouts to be used to make payments at the 164,000 merchants that accept PayNow bank fund transfers through apps such as LifeSG.

The merchants include e-commerce platforms such as Shopee and Lazada, and charity organisations such as Giving.sg.

Payments can simply be done by opening the LifeSG app and scanning an SGQR code.

With the extension of GovWallet to Nets, people will have more options in how they want to use the payouts, with 42,000 merchants now on the payment system.

While a list of participating merchants and when the system will include Nets are not immediately known, Nets card payments are now accepted at many retailers, dining outlets and healthcare institutions, among others.

Smart Nation Vision

GovWallet is one of several examples that Mrs Josephine Teo, Minister-in-Charge of Smart Nation and Cybersecurity, cited on Singapore’s Smart Nation vision of going cashless and using electronic payments.

Currently, GovWallet is used to give payouts to national servicemen.

Since November last year, the Ministry of Defence has used GovWallet to disburse cash recognition benefits to 35,000 operationally ready national servicemen through the LifeSG app.

Mrs Teo noted how in 2017, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he was looking forward to paying for his next meal at a hawker centre with PayNow.

“Today, more than half of all hawkers have adopted e-payments. In fact, more than $200 million PayNow transactions were made every day last year,” said Mrs Teo.

As the digital age develops even further, Singapore’s technology will undergo changes as well, so expect more manual processes to become digitalised in the future and reap its benefits.