POSB Smart Buddy programme

We continued to expand the world’s first integrated in-school savings and payments programme to more schools. The POSB Smart Buddy programme, which was launched in 2017, creates a contactless payments ecosystem within the school environment to help cultivate sensible savings and spending habits among young students in an interactive, engaging manner. These students are then better equipped to achieve financial wellness when they transition to the next stage of their lives.

We were the first bank to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Education (MOE) to install a digital payment infrastructure in more than 330 primary, secondary schools, junior colleges/ Millennia Institute and special education (SPED) schools within three years. Under the partnership, we will also provide up to 400,000 students with smartwatches and cards for payments.

Today, some 70,000 students in more than 100 schools are using Smart Buddy smartwatches and cards for digital payments. The programme also supports needy students under the MOE Financial Assistance Scheme. To date, about 60 Smart Buddy schools are administering meal subsidies to some 5,000 students via POSB Smart Buddy.

POSB PAssion Run for Kids

Singapore’s largest charity kids run organised a hybrid race, which included a virtual race and onsite sustainability-themed activities. Our beach clean-up and tree planting activity entered the Singapore Book of Records as the Largest Mass Plogging event and raised over SGD 930,000. To date, we have raised SGD 11.6 million, with more than 790,000 children benefitting from 198 programmes. One of the marquee programmes included a “EcoHeroes@Home” programme to encourage children and their families to reduce energy consumption at home.

Financial literacy workshops for youths

We partnered community partners, SPED schools and social service agencies to organise 70 financial literacy workshops for more than 2,600 kids and those with special needs. These sessions included bank branch visits to familiarise participants with banking services. Together with the Singapore Stock Exchange and People's Association (PA), we organised over 13 virtual and physical workshops for more than 3,000 working adults to raise their awareness of retirement, estate planning and investment.

The DBS Foundation contributed SGD 1 million, which includes the government’s dollar-for-dollar matching, to the Digital for Life movement and stepped up our volunteer participation to bolster digital inclusion efforts in Singapore. The broad-based support, through our strategic collaboration with IMDA, includes jointly launching community programmes and organising workshops to raise digital and financial literacy. Through our People of Purpose movement, our employees in Singapore will run the workshops. We aim to reach 100,000 Singaporeans and residents across various community segments, such as youths, persons with disabilities, seniors and hawkers over the next two years.

POSB remains the only bank to work with the Migrant Workers’ Centre and Centre for Domestic Employees to set up banking accounts for more than 640,000 migrant workers and foreign domestic workers. More than 70% of them use the POSB digibank app to conduct their banking transactions today. In 2022, remittance volumes for work permit holder accounts grew by 25% year-on-year.