FASS Brown Bag Seminar by Dr. Dylan Brady | Singapore’s Digital Payments Landscape: Encountering scale within and across territory
Dear all,
You are cordially invited to the third session of the FASS Brown Bag Seminar Series in Semester 2 of AY25/26. Dr Dylan Brady (NUS Geography) will be presenting a talk titled "Singapore’s Digital Payments Landscape: Encountering scale within and across territory."
Date: 12 Mar, 12pm-1pm
Venue: Zoom and in-person (FASS Research Division Seminar Room AS7 06-42)
Lunch will be provided for in-person attendees.
Singapore’s Digital Payments Landscape: Encountering scale within and across territory
Digital payments are fast reworking territory. In Singapore, the national digital payment infrastructures of PayNow borrows elements from both digital payments platforms emerging out of China and the long hegemonic US-origin credit card networks. SGQR encompasses all three, realizing Singaporean space through integration inside a national infrastructure.
This talk examines how the resulting landscape is experienced and navigated by everyday residents. It finds that Singapore’s platforms provide frictionless transactions—at a distinctly national scale; and provide a conveniently standardized interface—except for the inexplicable incompatibilities. This talk discusses how centralization and connection can paradoxically create greater heterogeneity, and re-inscribe rather than transcend boundaries of the nation-state.
Dylan Brady is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department at NUS. His research uses the lens of materiality to examine how abstractions like “nation” and “territory” emerge through and manifest within the things and infrastructures of everyday life. Previous projects examined rail infrastructure, health apps, and airports.