The Board of Directors of Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd ("ST Engg") wishes to announce that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Singapore Technologies Electronics Limited ("ST Elect"), has acquired a 19.8% equity stake in mPayment Pte Ltd ("mPayment"). ST Elect will have an option to increase its current shareholding to 33%.

Green Dot Capital ("GDC"), the e-business arm of Singapore Technologies, has also acquired 20.2% equity stake in mPayment. The remaining 60% equity shares are held by the founders and business angel.

mPayment specialises in mobile-payment, mobile-commerce and mobile-marketing solutions and holds 4 new patent-pending technologies - mPurse™, mDebit™, mCredit™ and mP2P™.

"We see mobile commerce as the next big consumer market driver. ST Elect intends to develop and deliver mobile payment solutions for the market. We have identified mPayment as one of several vehicles that will help us achieve this objective. mPurse™, the Short Message Service ("SMS") based micro-payment solution is the first mobile commerce solution that we are launching as part of our Mobile Commerce Initiatives," said Seah Moon Ming, President of ST Elect and Chairman of mPayment.

With mPurse™, a consumer need only send a simple formatted SMS instruction to make payment to his selected merchant by debiting a virtual stored-value card with a financial institution. mPurse™ makes it possible to make micro-payments (payments of up to $500 depending on the limits set by the financial institution) using any mobile phone in the market today, thus overcoming the limitations of existing WAP and SIM card payment solutions which work only with WAP phones and special SIM cards. With this convenient mobile payment service, merchants can now reach out to more than 3 million mobile phone consumers in Singapore by realizing buyers' "call-to-action" when they want a product or service, anytime anywhere.

"mPurse™ is already deployed with a customer which will be launching the mobile payment service shortly. We target to complete and deploy mDebit™, mCredit™ and mP2P™ by January 2002", said Daniel Wong, General Manager of mPayment. "mDebit™ and mCredit™ will enable a consumer to make a mobile payment transaction to a participating bill payment merchant or Point of Sale merchant by directly debiting the transaction amount from his bank account or via a credit card payment into the merchant's bank account".

mP2P™ will enable mobile peer-to-peer payments that can be extended to cross-border transactions. This means that one party in Singapore can pay another party in another country if they both hold accounts in branches of the same bank that are linked for cross-border payment settlements.

"ST Elect is developing a strong Mobile Commerce initiative and will work with market players that will offer us the best vehicle platform to bring our mobile commerce solutions and products to the market. Our mobile commerce initiatives will bring together mPayment, payment infrastructure providers, payment solutions companies, telecommunication service providers and ST Elect's own mobile devices and system integration capabilities to build and deploy a total m-commerce community in Singapore and the region." said Seah Moon Ming.

About ST Elect
ST Elect, the electronics arm of ST Engg, is one of the largest electronics system houses in the region. ST Elect prides itself in delivering innovative system solutions to defence, commercial and industrial customers worldwide. It specialises in the design, development and integration of advanced electronics systems, such as communications, m-commerce solutions, microwave, traffic and rail management, real-time command and control system, training & simulation, and intelligent building management. ST Elect applies new technologies and design applications to the demands and stringent requirements of customised electronics systems and solutions. It undertakes continuing research and development to help create cost-effective proprietary products at system and component levels, delivering innovative and quality solutions to customers.

About ST Engg
ST Engg is an integrated engineering group specialising in the fields of aerospace, electronics, land systems and marine. A leader in each of its core businesses, ST Engg provides one-stop services for air, land and sea platforms as well as systems-based solutions. Headquartered in Singapore, the Group employs about 10,000 employees worldwide with revenues of about S$2.3 billion. ST Engg is listed on the Singapore Exchange with a market capitalisation in excess of S$7 billion.

About mPayment
mPayment is a specialised mobile payment solutions provider, m-commerce enabler and m-marketing solutions company. Started by a team of four young payment and banking security professionals, it holds 4 new patent-pending technologies - mPurse™, mDebit™, mCredit™ and mP2P™. mPayment's products include a PDA-based mobile encryption and payment solution, and joint SIM II development with a leading SIM card manufacturer in October 2000. mPurse™ is a world-first end-to-end mobile stored-value micro-payment solution fully deployed on an extensive, secure and reliable multi-bank multi-merchant payment infrastructure. mPurse™ enables any mobile phone user to send a simple formatted Short Message Service ("SMS") message to mPayment mPay™ Gateway ("MMG") to authorise and instruct micro-payment from his virtual e-purse account to his designated merchant. mPayment targets to complete and deploy mDebit™, mCredit™, mP2P™ and telco post-paid pilots by January 2002.

Submitted by Mrs Chua Su Li, Company Secretary on 15/08/2001.

Press Contact:
Shirley Tan
VP / Head, Corporate Communications ST Engg
Tel: (65) 2332883
Fax: (65) 8361933
Email: shirleyt@st.com.sg

Note: All Trademarks mentioned in this press release belong to the respective owners of the said trademarks.