Bigger, better, bolder lab crawl at DBS Asia X
What made this year different?
DBS Asia X broke its lab crawl record by attracting more than 1,000 participants this year. Over two days, participants learnt about how DBS’ solutions increased efficiencies in enterprise resource planning, shipping trade, ride-hail services, insurance claims, F&B payments and even recruitment among other aspects of innovation.
“It was one of the best lab crawls I’ve attended,” a participant of the Fintech Festival DBS Asia X Lab Crawl shared his excitement after completing the tour. The event on 15 and 16 November was held in conjunction with the Singapore Fintech Festival to introduce DBS’ solutions for corporations and consumers, as well as the bank’s collaborations with the fintech ecosystem.
Here are some of the highlights of the lab crawl:
Show and tell
Four of the 11 interactive showcases allowed participants to test different integrated e-payment systems. DBS MAX, a newly launched solution that offers small and medium-sized enterprises greater convenience in payment reconciliation, proved to be a hit, with the booth offering ice-cream as a product that participants could try to order.
The Startup Xchange programme was also a crowd favourite. The section introduced three F&B merchants,Wolf Burgers, Soup Spoon and Kopi Ong, whose order-pay-collect systems were developed by fintech start-ups Every Botty and Eunoia. Their delish items were snapped up in no time.
Another showcase highlight was DBS Omni, which was launched the same day in Hong Kong. The iconic credit card journey now enables consumers to apply for DBS credit cards via their mobile phones so that they can enjoy retail promotions instantly. Participants were pleasantly surprised by the elimination of waiting time for Hong Kong credit card users.
“It was incredibly interactive and a real eye-opener to the exciting developments we are witnessing in the digital space,” another participant shared after experiencing the showcases.
Brainy conversations
What’s a lab crawl without panel discussions? The event invited 14 speakers from 17 organisations to participate in engaging discussions on topics ranging from e-commerce, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, data analytics, governance, entrepreneurship and responsible innovation. The oversubscribed sessions sparked off a series of Q&As and generated robust debates about consumer behavioural patterns, the use of technology and impactful partnerships.
Hands-on play time
Adding a lighter touch to the event was the play zone where attendees experienced hands-on activities. The DigiArt station that allowed participants to design and print their own tote bags produced 700 customised bags by the end of two days. Other stations had gamers actively playing Nintendo Labo games on their cardboard kits, as well as coders who could control the movement of Hackbots via various colour-code combinations.
The lab crawl ended on a high note with DBS Asia X’s second anniversary celebration. The centre’s top 10 moments were summarised in a video, and served as a reminder for DBS Innovation to continue to bring speed and clarity to the future of banking.
