The state-led platformisation of financial services: Frictionless ecosystems and an expansive logic of "smartness" in Singapore

• Main Authors: WOODS, Orlando, BUNNELL, Tim, KONG, Lily
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2023
• Subjects: Platform urbanism; State-led platformisation; Financial services; Smart cities; Singapore; Asian Studies; Science and Technology Policy; Technology and Innovation; Urban Studies and Planning
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/129; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/cis_research/article/1128/viewcontent/State_led_Platformisation_sv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

This article explores the role of the state in driving the platformisation of industry, and in doing so offers a counterpoint to scholarship that focusses on the exploitative effects of private sector-led platformisation. That scholarship views platformisation as the latest incarnation of neoliberal urbanism, with the profit-maximising tendencies of the private sector driving the proliferation of platforms throughout everyday life. Notwith- standing, there remains a need to consider alternative models of platformisation. Drawing on 31 interviews with architects of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, we consider the state-led platformisation of financial services. We argue that state-led platformisation can open up marketplaces to new forms of innovation, customer value creation, and competition through the creation of data ecosystems that are built on openness, trust and trans- parency. This flattens the distinctions between regulator and regulated, and between competitor and collabo- rator, and foregrounds the role of platforms in driving the transformation of industry.