DBS readies Singapore’s facilities management sector for digital transformation with QuickPay

By Edil Corneille

Singapore-based DBS, a multinational banking and financial services corporation, announced what is said to be the industry’s first digital collection solution for recurring and one-off resident payments, including conservancy fees, facility booking fees, and sinking funds. QuickPay, developed by DBS Bank in collaboration with homegrown PropTech company IBASE Technology, enables Management Corporation Strata Title (MCSTs) and Managing Agent (MA) companies to collect resident payments digitally in the growing number of private residential estates. With QuickPay, payments can be made by scanning a unique QR code.

Joyce Tee, Group Head of SME Banking at DBS encapsulated, “Covid-19 has permanently altered both consumer behaviour and business operations, and people will increasingly expect more ‘contact-free’ touchpoints. This includes payments for facility management fees, which have been cumbersome and manual for far too long. With QuickPay, not only can MCSTs and MAs meet residents’ expectations of digital payment modes, they can also enjoy improved productivity as a result of optimised, digitalised workflows. QuickPay is expected to benefit residents of close to 24,000 units in more than 30 private estates across Singapore within the next three months, moving Singapore closer to achieving its vision of being a Smart Nation.”

Available on the Qornerstone Estate property management platform, QuickPay passes transaction details into Qornerstone Estate, which automatically issues the electronic receipt, reconciles the payment and updates the MCSTs’ financial records. This frees MCST staff from the tedium of manual data entry, and over-the-counter transaction processing and documentation. Residents will also find QuickPay a joy to use with its integrated support for PayNow and DBS PayLah! payments, which were not available previously for MCST estates.

Ernest Ong, CEO of IBASE Technology stated, “Our customers have been asking for an e-payment solution to help them automate payments collections for a long time now. We are glad to now answer this need so simply and effectively through our collaboration with DBS Bank. By adopting QuickPay, MCST estates and building owners can drive the digitalisation of property management with cost savings for the estate and the service provider.”

Pang Yoke Hong, MCST Chairman of The Casablanca said, “QuickPay will help streamline our payment collection process, thereby minimising the risk of lost or bounced cheques and unaccounted cash. We look forward to our residents enjoying the convenience of making payments with a simple scan of a QR code, and having the collections immediately deposited into our MCST account with full transaction details automatically captured in the back-end accounting system without having staff doing paperwork.”