Singapore's electronic Giro (eGiro), a digital service will be provided by eight major banks and 13 billers. The new digital process will cut down the time of processing payments from an average of three weeks to mere minutes.
eGiro is an initiative that digitises the Giro application based in Singapore to significantly reduce the Giro setup turnaround time. This joint initiative by the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) and participating banks are supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
A total of 13 billing organisations along with eight major banks that include DBS, OCBC, and UOB will offer this service. The new initiative was launched on 8 November 2021 and is still in its initial phase.
Introduced in 1984, Giro, or General Interbank Recurring Order is widely used in Singapore to automate electronic payments of the monthly recurring bills such as fees for school, credit card bills, etc. Over a million Giro applications are processed every year.
The billing organisations used to manually process forms and banks have to verify the account details. These applications took an average time of three weeks to process. The new eGiro service was introduced to eliminate the long time to process an application.
Ong-Ang Ai Boon, director at ABS said the new eGiro service will cut processing time to “mere minutes” for a consumer. eGiro will reduce paper use and minimise human errors that occur in the current manual process.
For corporate transfers that require an approver, the process will take less than 48 hours. Users who wish to set up an eGiro payment with any of the 13 billing organisations may do so only after the biller implements the eGiro payment option on their online platform or app. The users will receive a confirmation via the internet banking portal once eGiro is set up.
The new digital service will remain free of charge for consumers. ABS said the existing Giro instructions and the paper-based application will continue to function and will not be migrated to eGiro.
Ong-Ang said the association received many letters from customers requesting a faster Giro application process. The banking industry tried to digitise the application process back in 2017. “But technology did not, at that point in time, permit such a possibility,” Ong-Ang said.
Utilising e-Giro for customer’s payment needs
ABS along with other participating banks are working with the industry to bring in more banks and billers on board to provide eGiro service.
Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer at MAS said eGiro makes way for the industry to explore innovative payment models such as automatic e-wallet top-ups. Two e-wallet providers, GrabPay and Singtel Dash have been brought onto the first phase of the eGiro rollout to provide payment mode for its customers.
This new service was designed and implemented by Deloitte Consulting Southeast Asia and will be operated by Banking Computer Service, a subsidiary of payment services firm NETS.
Singapore E-Business (SGeBIZ), a payment aggregator for business is among the billing organisations that have implemented eGiro services for their customers. “SGeBIZ’s EzyPayment eGiro platform will enable its customers to reduce costs, gain greater operational efficiency, streamline workflow as well as improve liquidity and cash flows,” it said.
Stringent security measures were put in place to safeguard consumers’ personal data that passes through eGiro. The data remains encrypted and only the bank and the organisation that receives consumer data are allowed to decrypt it. The authentication and authorisation processes are underpinned by the bank’s two-factor authentication (2FA) and transaction signing.