MAS f**ks Calvin Cheng deep deep for calling for a cashless society

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MAS: "Customers can benefit from having alternative payment providers and carrying some cash as a contingency. During this recent service disruption, many affected customers with alternative payment providers were able to switch to those or to using cash, minimising inconvenience."

Media Releases
Published Date: 19 October 2023

MAS' Response to Media Queries on DBS Bank and Citibank's Recent Banking Services Disruptions​

Singapore, 19 October 2023... MAS requires all banks to ensure that their critical systems and services to customers are resilient to disruption. Banks are required to have in place back-up data centres and systems and test them periodically to ensure that critical systems and services can be restored within 4 hours following an outage. In addition, the unscheduled downtime for a critical system affecting a bank’s operations or service to customers must not exceed 4 hours within any 12-month period.

MAS does not have oversight of data centres; instead MAS expects banks to establish contractual agreements with data centre providers that incorporate MAS’ requirements on system availability.

Both DBS Bank Ltd (DBS Bank) as well as Citibank N.A., Singapore Branch and Citibank Singapore Limited (Citibank) activated their back-up data centres when their primary data centres failed to perform normally on 14 October 2023.

However, the banks were not able to fully recover their systems within the required timeframe. MAS has instructed both banks to conduct a thorough investigation on why they were not able to do so, and will take appropriate supervisory actions after gathering the necessary facts.

No IT system is infallible. Banks and customers should have contingency measures in the event of service disruptions caused by IT outages.

The banks activated contingency measures such as extension of branch hours and alternative arrangements for credit card transactions, to reduce the impact on customers.

Customers can benefit from having alternative payment providers and carrying some cash as a contingency. During this recent service disruption, many affected customers with alternative payment providers were able to switch to those or to using cash, minimising inconvenience.

 

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'This is mad': Ex-NMP Calvin Cheng, who's for cashless society, slams MP Don Wee over new Choa Chu Kang ATM​

Wee said the ATM was installed at the residents' request.
Ilyda Chua
February 17, 2023

Former Nominated Member of Parliament Calvin Cheng is continuing his crusade against physical cash.


In a Feb. 17 Facebook post, he lambasted Choa Chu Kang GRC MP Don Wee for celebrating the installation of a new UOB ATM, which dispenses physical notes.
In particular, Cheng criticised Wee's call for more banks to "join in and provide greater convenience for our residents".
"This is mad," Cheng wrote. "For a member of parliament from the ruling party openly going against our drive to minimise cash."
"Not only celebrating an outdated form of payment, but encouraging banks to install more ATMs."

Installed at residents' request​

The ATM in question was installed at Block 810 Choa Chu Kang Avenue 7.
According to Wee's Facebook post — which also included a TikTok video of him introducing viewers to the machine — the ATM was installed at the request of "many residents", particularly those at Axis Colours.
In the video, he also thanked the bank for setting up the ATM, "as they need to incur a few thousand dollars to maintain this machine as well as to cater security to top up the cash frequently".
He added: "We will continue to invite other banks to set up ATM machines in this precinct."
However, Cheng challenged this, saying that "banks should be doing the opposite", which is, he wrote: "Closing ATMs."
In response to the understanding that such measures are taken for the elderly in our society, Cheng said:

"Let’s not spread the myth that old people cannot use digital payments. Old people from small villages in China do it daily. Are our old people more backward???
And even if it’s the case that this is something for the convenience of old people, then we should STILL be reducing ATMs, not increasing the number."

"What an embarrassment," he noted.

Cash = backward?​

The ex-NMP and fintech evangelist has spoken out widely on his Facebook page against a cash-centric culture, drawing comparisons to other cash-lite societies like the UK and Sweden.
Previously, he called for a boycott against certain food stalls at a CBD food court that only accepted cash.
But members of the public, and even Temasek Trust chairman Ho Ching, have defended these stall-owners.
Sharing a Facebook user's heartwarming encounter with a cash-only wonton mee stall in Yishun, Ho wrote: "Indeed there is no need to shame others for using cash - What matters is that the heart is in the right place..."

 

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Calvin Cheng Faces Backlash for Criticizing Singapore’s Cash-Only Businesses​

Jewel Stolarchuk
Posted onMarch 2, 2023

SINGAPORE: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, Ho Ching, censured ex-Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Calvin Cheng for “scolding” Singaporeans who have yet to go cashless in two separate Facebook posts yesterday (1 March).
Mr. Calvin Cheng‘s habit of disparaging businesses that accept cash-only payments has rubbed many Singaporeans the wrong way for some time now. His aversion to businesses that have declined to go cashless in today’s digital economy is well-documented on his Facebook page.
Some small businesses have decided to forgo going cashless, given the service fees that online payment platforms charge, while others feel that cash is safer. This hasn’t stopped Mr. Calvin Cheng from naming and shaming businesses like food stalls that only accept cash payments. He has also called for a boycott of such businesses—an idea that has been promptly condemned by most Singaporeans online.
Perhaps what is most disturbing about the ex-NMP tirades on this topic is the strong language he has used to describe those with opposing views. He initially called businesses that haven’t gone cashless “backward” and “shameful” before labeling Singaporeans “primitive people, who find it controversial to boycott merchants who offer cash as the only payment option.”
See also Calvin Cheng tells Kirsten Han to clarify her statement
He has also suggested that food stall owners have refused to go cashless to “hide cash transactions from the tax man” while saying that Singaporeans will become “peasants” if this issue persists. The establishment figure even criticized a ruling party MP for celebrating the opening of an ATM as he thinks banks should be closing ATMs to push people to go cashless.

While some Singaporeans have supported the notion Mr. Calvin Cheng stands for, he has received brickbats for the way he has gone about pushing for a more cashless society. The way that he has denigrated those who have yet to go cashless has earned the ire of the Prime Minister’s wife.
Mdm Ho first chided Mr. Calvin Cheng in a Facebook post on 16 Feb. Sharing a netizen’s heartwarming account of how a “cash-only” eatery allowed her to pay later when she did not have cash, Mdm Ho said: “Indeed there is no need to shame others for using cash – What matters is that the heart is in the right place…”
See also Calvin Cheng refutes Tan Cheng Bock, says lowering the voting age to 18 is “foolish”
It has become clear that the ex-NMP’s continued tirades have troubled Mdm Ho. Sharing one of the posts Mr. Calvin Cheng made on 14 Feb, she said yesterday: “… Why scold others for insisting on one or the other medium of exchange? In many cases, sympathy, empathy and a helping hand would help speed up the transition.”
She further rebuked in a second post, just minutes later: “Encouraging folks to go cashless or go digital is the way to go. But scolding folks for sticking with cash is not the way to bring society forward together.”

This is not the first time Mdm Ho has crossed swords with the former NMP. In 2021, the pair sparred on Facebook over whether tracking unlinked COVID-19 cases is meaningful.
In any case, it is unlikely that Mr. Cheng will change his stance on the cashless issue. He said in one recent post: “You can disagree, you can be angry, you can abuse me, write articles on me but I will NOT BACK DOWN.”

 

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PayLah! down for some users, less than a week after DBS banking services were disrupted​

DBS said that access to PayLah! was intermittent. PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

Fatimah Mujibah

Oct 20, 2023

SINGAPORE – Following an outage that lasted more than 12 hours over the weekend, DBS Bank faced another hiccup on Friday morning with customers unable to access online service PayLah!.
In a Facebook post at around 10am, DBS said that access to PayLah! was intermittent. The bank advised its customers to use DBS digibank Scan and Pay, or DBS/POSB debit or credit cards for their payments.
The bank said that those who are able to access PayLah! and are eligible for the DBS 5 Million Hawker Meals cashback will receive their rebate by Friday.
The cashback is an initiative by DBS introduced in February to support hawkers. The $3 discount is available every Friday for the first 100,000 users on their hawker meals islandwide.
“We are resolving the issue. We apologise for the inconvenience caused and seek your understanding,” DBS said.
The Straits Times understands that ATM machines are unaffected.
The Downdetector website, which tracks service disruptions, saw an increase in complaints about DBS at 7.45am.

At about 9am, there were about 397 reports from DBS customers on the website.
A Facebook user named Jerome Fs commented: “Can’t even log in (using) the app. People are waiting for me to make payment while queuing. You know how embarrassing it is? How can we ‘go cashless’ when our technology cannot keep it up?”
Several users also commented on the frequent issues faced by DBS and expressed their disappointment.
The disruption to PayLah! comes after physical ATMs, website and cards were down last Saturday afternoon. All of its banking services resumed on Sunday morning.
DBS said its investigations showed that the service disruption was caused by an issue at a data centre, which is also used by other organisations.
ST has contacted DBS for comment.

 

[k1976]

U will know the answer soon....dun worry

 

[ftan42]

many neighborhood branches were closed because of going cashless why not keep them as contingency when the secondary backup data center also failed to perform

 

[laksaboy]

Reminder that Calvin Cheng is a quisling affiliated to the WEF. Look it up.

Actually, all of them are. Don't be fooled into thinking Calvin Cheng bad, therefore the others must be good.

 

[congo9]

Why is there a need to go cashless? What's the rational ,so that gov can track you down easily ?

 

[Scrooball (clone)]

Calvin Cheng is an attention whore. I bet he gets a hardon whenever he gets quoted in the papers.

 

[mahjongking]

what the fuck this motherfucker talking about?....... this type of CB face, see one time, whack one time, whack until he stfu
sinkees are already cashless from all the inflation and coe and gst and cpf and water hike....and whatever fuck you can think of

 

[Hightech88]

View attachment 190242

Calvin Cheng is wrong because...

 

[po2wq]

... "This is mad," Cheng wrote. "For a member of parliament from the ruling party openly going against our drive to minimise cash."
"Not only celebrating an outdated form of payment, but encouraging banks to install more ATMs."
...

tis evil scumburger is trying 2 hoodwink others n make himself rook gr8 by toking rubbish ...

if he really wanted no cash in sinkielan, ze way 2 dat is not 2 remov atm machines ...

dare he tel ze gahmen 2 stop printing moni n collect back all paper moni? ...

 

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Forum: Build in enough slack for digital solutions in case of failure​

OCT 30, 2023

I refer to the article “‘I carried around my piggy bank’: Amid DBS, Citibank service outage, cash is king” (Oct 17).
The recent outage in the provision of bank digital payment services was not the first, and will probably not be the last. The IT infrastructures of financial services firms are interlinked with complicated webs of dependencies and multiple possible points of failure. It is thus vital that there is enough slack in the system such that when one part fails, the system can fail gracefully.

In the fervour to embrace digital innovations, the old paper and tactile-based systems are often ditched in the name of upgrading, a move perhaps also driven by a myopic desire to cut cost, to the detriment of system resilience.

The systems painstakingly built up over decades to handle and clear cheques are slowly being dismantled. If and when PayNow is not working, the fallback is coins and notes and piggy banks – pity those handling large transactions. Perhaps paying via good old cheques should not be discouraged in good times, so that we have a painless payment alternative in bad times.

Two-factor authentication using physical bank tokens have also been phased out in favour of having the mobile phone act as both the maker and checker of identity, and this coincided with the increase in the number of scams exploiting this security vulnerability. In the final consideration, have the cost savings in phasing out physical tokens taken into account these knock-on costs?

In augmenting system slack and resilience, one example that can be emulated is the migration of parking coupons to a digital app. In extraordinary times, whether it be the app failing due to a deployment error, or the phone being misplaced or stolen or simply out of battery, paper coupons are an excellent fuss-free failsafe.

Jonathan Khoo (Dr)

 

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Forum: Urgent need to bring back physical token for bank transactions​

Nov 1, 2023

The spike in malware scam cases in July and August compared with the first half of this year is alarming. Around 650 victims lost $10.6 million in these two months, compared with 750 victims losing $10 million in the earlier six months (Spike in malware scam victims in July and August, with $10.6m lost, Oct 15).

The case for bringing back physical tokens for bank transactions is compelling (Build in enough slack for digital solutions in case of failure, Oct 30). A physical token provides true two-factor authentication (2FA) as a separate device from the phone and a high level of old-fashioned protection we can all understand.

Technology is constantly evolving and the best software security today will be defeated by tomorrow’s hack. Proponents of Smart Nation initiatives need to recognise the limits of digitalisation. By all means, digitalise, but retain good security practices that work.

Not only do the anti-malware tools to be introduced in new banking apps and the proposed money-lock features create new issues for users, but they also do not plug the security gap like the good old physical token.

There is an urgent need to bring back the token, so as to restore trust in digital banking in the wake of escalating scam cases that may soon prove too heavy a burden for the police and society.

Margaret See

 

[laksaboy]

Just another whore of the World Economic Forum, they are obsessed with 'sustainability' and a cashless/digital (15-minute) city.

And he's probably another vaxtard.

 

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4 of the 5 major DBS disruptions in 2023 were bug or software-related: CEO Piyush Gupta​

DBS will also set aside a special budget of $80 million to enhance system resiliency. ST PHOTO: GIN TAY

Prisca Ang

Nov 6, 2023

SINGAPORE – DBS Bank will hire more engineering talent in the coming months to troubleshoot issues that might lie deep within its technology systems, in response to a spate of disruptions that have plagued customers this year.
Chief executive officer Piyush Gupta said on Monday that four of the bank’s five major disruptions in 2023 were bug- or software-related.
“The big issue to me is, how do you make sure that you get good change control, because the reality is that as you use a lot of different systems and architecture, you will run into bugs,” he told reporters during the bank’s third-quarter results briefing on Monday.
Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) managing director Ravi Menon said last week in an interview that there are some deeper-seated issues that need to be resolved at the bank.
Responding to a question on Monday about what these issues are, Mr Gupta said: “One issue is to have the deep engineering talent, because in at least two or three of these incidents, the bug was so deep that we wouldn’t be able to pick it up.”
Several of the recent disruptions have boiled down to human error or software bugs in systems of the bank’s vendors, he noted.
Working with a vendor to resolve these problems takes time, he said. Instead, improving the depth of DBS’ engineering team will help it troubleshoot bugs better.


Mr Gupta said the bank is working on a comprehensive set of measures to deliver improved service availability and hopes to have a more robust recovery process by the end of the first quarter of 2024.
One measure is to put in place more rigorous and comprehensive processes to ensure that systems that are being developed work correctly. The bank will also set aside a special budget of $80 million to enhance system resiliency.
Another priority is to decouple the bank’s systems such that important services can still be accessed.
Its payment service, for example, operates on multiple tech systems. Decoupling its underlying infrastructure will allow customers to pay via the bank’s other digital banking platforms even if one of these channels fails.
“It’s hard to figure out why we are getting more bugs now than we have in the past,” said Mr Gupta. “It’s purely my speculation that post-Covid, people are working from home and I think there’s been more pressure on software quality in general around the world.”


DBS was barred last week by the country’s central bank from acquiring new businesses or making non-essential IT changes for six months to ensure it focuses on shoring up its digital banking services. It is also not allowed to reduce the number of its branches and automated teller machines (ATMs) during this time.
Asked whether the measures will affect business, Mr Gupta said the bank did not have new deals or business ventures planned, and has not reduced its branch or ATM network in recent years.
“We will have to defer some new product features, new products and services which we would normally have done.
“But in reality, we have to focus on building resiliency so we would not have been able to put resources (in those areas) anyway. The MAS measures give us a six-month window to consolidate (our processes).
“When you have good brakes, then you can run faster later.”

 

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2.5 million transactions affected by recent DBS, Citibank outages; 810,000 login attempts failed​

DBS and Citibank have to conduct thorough investigations and come up with a plan that will minimise future disruptions and outages. ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW

Chor Khieng Yuit
Senior Correspondent

Nov 6, 2023

SINGAPORE – Some 2.5 million payment and automated teller machine transactions could not be completed during the banking outages that hit DBS Bank and Citibank on Oct 14, causing widespread disruption to businesses and consumers, said Minister of State for Trade and Industry Alvin Tan on Monday.
Customers also made up to 810,000 failed attempts to access the digital banking platforms of both banks between 2.54pm that day and 4.47am the following day.
Providing the estimates on the impact of the outages in Parliament, Mr Tan said that both banks have fallen short of regulatory requirements to ensure that their critical information technology systems are resilient against prolonged disruptions.
The outages were caused by a fault in the cooling system of an Equinix data centre used by DBS and Citibank. While both activated disaster recovery and contingency plans, services were only fully restored in the early hours of Oct 15.
“While both banks conducted annual exercises to test the recovery of the IT systems at the backup data centres, the specific issues that led to the delays in system recovery on Oct 14 did not surface during those tests,” he added.
Mr Tan noted that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has measures in place to uphold the “reliability and recoverability” of banking services.
Under the Banking Act, banks that are found to have breached MAS’ requirements on technology risk management can be fined up to $100,000. This will be increased to a maximum of $1 million in 2024, Mr Tan said.

MAS also uses other regulatory tools to address lapses in banks’ risk management, Mr Tan said. This includes imposing additional capital requirements and suspending certain bank activities.
He cited DBS as an example, and said the string of five disruptions to banking services in the last eight months was “unacceptable”.
MPs questioned whether the punitive measures imposed on DBS were enough.

Tampines GRC MP Desmond Choo said it is “nothing short of a slap on the wrist”.
Mr Tan noted that MAS took a tougher stance on DBS, by requiring it to hold additional regulatory capital.

Higher capital requirements mean DBS must hold more liquid capital, which could leave the bank with less money for dividends or investments.
“It is a drag on the return of capital which could in turn impact credit ratings, as well as the stock price of the bank,” Mr Tan said.
DBS also cannot undertake new acquisitions and has to pause non-essential IT changes for six months.
Mr Tan noted that the measures do not stop here. DBS and Citibank have to conduct thorough investigations and come up with a plan that will minimise future disruptions and outages.
He added that the banks will need to test their plans regularly to ensure they are able to recover within four hours in the event of another outage.
West Coast GRC MP Ang Wei Neng asked if MAS will consider asking banks that have been hit by outages to compensate customers directly.
Adding to his earlier point that “matters of compensation are better dealt with between the bank and its customers”, Mr Tan noted that consumers can hold financial institutions accountable for such incidents.
“If I am unable to pay using one of the financial services providers, then I go to the other one. I lose confidence in one, I go to the other one.”
Mr Tan added that consumers can also consider using different ways to pay, so they are not overly reliant on one financial provider for time-sensitive transactions.
During the Oct 14 disruption, some customers were able to switch to alternative payment methods or providers, or use cash.
The disruption also highlighted the importance of data centres to a bank’s operations.

Mr Tan said the Government is looking into ways to further strengthen the security and resilience of data centres.
Like other major jurisdictions, MAS currently does not regulate external data service providers, which are typically not financial institutions.
It is the bank’s duty to implement adequate risk controls and oversight over their data centre providers, so they can deliver on their financial services with minimal disruptions, he added.