OREANDA-NEWS. At the World Cities Summit today, MasterCard and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to help companies in Singapore build innovative technology solutions. These efforts seek to improve experiences of consumers and enable companies to expand into adjacent business areas in a digital environment.

In the next two years, the two parties will focus on tackling some of the biggest urban challenges of our time: how to promote mobility, tourism and trade while enabling seamless experiences and sustainable growth.

Building on this foundation, MasterCard and the EDB in partnership with other Singapore-based companies plan to work together to design and build technology platforms in the three following areas:

  • Tourism: Cooperating with the Singapore tourism stakeholders in order to provide an enhanced experience that lets Singapore residents and visitors navigate the city state’s attractions in an easier, more connected fashion;
  • Urban Mobility: Helping transportation partners to enable a seamless urban mobility experience for Singaporeans and ensuring that visitors feel as much at home on the local transit system as residents;
  • Trade: Digitizing and automating how companies buy, sell and pay each other, both for B2B payments including Singapore’s shipping industry

For each of these three areas, solutions will be designed and developed out of Singapore, further enhancing Singapore’s ability to create innovative products and services which are exportable and can be globally deployed.

Harnessing its global network, innovative technology and data analytics, MasterCard will bring to bear its extensive experience in connecting various players – including government agencies, transport operators, retailers, travel & hospitality companies and financial institutions – to drive safer, simpler and smarter experiences for businesses and consumers.

Since 2012, Singapore has been one of MasterCard’s global R&D Centers (MasterCard Labs) – which most recently launched the first commerce application for SoftBank Robotics’ humanoid robot Pepper. Earlier this year, MasterCard teamed up with IBM to offer smaller merchants in Singapore and across the Asia-Pacific region market insights that integrate IBM Watson Analytics with insights based on aggregaed and anonymized transaction data through MasterCard Advisors Local Market Intelligence (LMI).

In major cities around the world including London, Athens and Bogota, MasterCard is already working with local authorities and other technology companies to make public transport more accessible and more efficient.

Mr Kelvin Wong, Assistant Managing Director at EDB said: “We are happy to work with MasterCard to enable the creation of new solutions in the identified themes.  This is in line with EDB’s drive for Singapore to be a hotbed for innovation and creation of new businesses, which in turn will contribute to economic growth and the creation of good jobs.”

Comments Ari Sarker, co-President MasterCard Asia-Pacific: “For many years, Singapore has been setting the benchmark for what it means to become a smart city and a smart nation. MasterCard is proud to work with the Economic Development Board to develop first-of-their kind solutions that make the lives of people and businesses easier – and that help Singapore further strengthen its competitive position in the world economy.”