Forum: Making PayNow system more secure

Commuters using mobile phones at a bus stop opposite Khatib MRT Station, on Oct 17, 2019. ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI

PayNow is certainly a welcome enhancement to our payment system. I would like to suggest an improvement to enhance its security.

With the current arrangement, the recipient gets a notification message of incoming funds after the transaction has been completed, but has no control over it.

This could allow ill-intentioned senders to easily make fund transfers for dubious reasons.

The current system can be improved by including a pre-notification step to the intended recipient, requiring the recipient to accept or reject the payment before funds are transferred.

The pre-notification message should also include the name of the sender for the recipient to decide whether or not to accept the fund transfer.

This step will help strengthen payment security by avoiding fund transfers that were initiated in error or with dubious intentions.

This control feature would also strengthen the comfort level of senders when using the system.

Neo Kim Teck

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on January 09, 2020, with the headline Forum: Making PayNow system more secure. Subscribe