How It Works

GovWallet is part of the Service layer of the Singapore Government Tech Stack (SGTS). As a backend service module, GovWallet can be integrated with any government mobile applications (e.g. LifeSG and Singpass) to allow beneficiaries to spend the credits at merchants with PayNow and NETS e-payment methods. It is also integrated with ATMs to facilitate cash disbursement to people without banking accounts.

GovWallet allows the agencies to maintain control of their distribution exercises, while beneficiaries can track their pay-out and spending history via various frontend channels. One of its key features is that it enables agencies to select specific merchants and control where pay-outs can be used.

By leveraging local banks’ PayNow and NETS e-Payment ecosystems, GovWallet is able to perform instant transfers from agencies to the merchants. For beneficiaries without bank accounts and mobile devices, the GovWallet team has partnered with the Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) and OCBC Bank to allow beneficiaries to withdraw their pay-outs from OCBC’s ATMs.

It started off as an internal pilot project by GovTech’s Government Digital Services (GDS) team to enable GovTech to credit staff benefits into GovWallet and allows the recipients to transfer these benefits to their PayNow accounts or use them at merchants that accept the PayNow e-Payment method.

GovTech’s Government Digital Services (GDS) team built and deployed GovWallet fully on the cloud, which allows the team to flexibly scale compute and storage capacities based on the data demands of the respective campaigns. Adopting a serverless architecture allowed the team to focus on making GovWallet more cost-efficient, performant, and responsive to traffic surge.

Agencies no longer need to develop individual systems to conduct their respective distribution exercises, and beneficiaries can easily access their government pay-outs through familiar app interfaces.

Since then, GovWallet has received interest from many organisations to be used in household and social assistance programmes, sector-specific relief programmes, and even staff recognition programmes.