Saturday, December 31, 2011

Today Voices: Automatic notification for Payment

Editor, Voices, Today


I CONGRATULATE the Singapore Land Authority for introducing an electronic system to allow lawyers to notify the banks of details of payments paid into conveyancing accounts, instead of using hard copy forms. This is a useful step to reduce paperwork and improve productivity.

I notice however, that this is an initiative taken by an agency to cover only a small section of the transactions. It still requires the payer to take a separate step to send a notification to the payee.

I urge our banks in Singapore to introduce a common system for electronic payment and notification. This system can ride on the existing security infrastructure of the banks to validate the payers and allow them to make electronic payments through a common payment gateway to the payee accounts. The process should include an electronic notification to be sent to the payees. 

This type of arrangement has been in force for several years for payments through PayPal. It is time to update our antiquated payment process to match the best in practice in other countries, and to reduce the large volume of cheque payments and notification letters that still flood our mailboxes.

I hope that the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore will take the lead to make this long-overdue change.



Tan Kin Lian

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