The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated digitalisation efforts in many countries as they try to contain the virus. With the physical handling of cash posing as a potential virus transmission risk, digital payments have become important in the urgent transition to a cashless society and a key feature of smart city projects. Critical analyses have typically framed smart cities as neoliberalist developmental projects that see the partnering of the state with private corporations. However, it is unclear how the smart city emerges under the technocratic inclinations of the developmental state. Focusing on the digital payments project under Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, this paper unpacks the discursive practices employed in mobilising citizen support for electronic payments through a critical analysis of publicly available government materials and recent initiatives. The discourse surrounding digital payments is bound up in narratives surrounding economic competitiveness, technological progress and public health and safety, and strongly rooted in a technocratic governance ethos that limits genuine citizen participation in shaping smart payments technologies. This paper argues that such discursive framings represent a missed opportunity to build a smart city that is truly citizen-centric. This reorientation requires more bottom-up and grassroots-based modes of governance that reformulate smart citizenship into one that pays greater attention to the affective and social contexts behind digital technologies.

Covid-19 大流行加速了许多国家试图控制病毒的数字化工作。由于现金的物理处理构成潜在的病毒传播风险，数字支付在向无现金社会的紧急过渡中变得重要，也是智慧城市项目的一个关键特征。批判性分析通常将智慧城市视为新自由主义发展项目，将国家与私营公司合作。然而，尚不清楚智慧城市如何在发展型国家的技术官僚倾向下出现。专注于新加坡智能国家计划下的数字支付项目，本文通过对公开的政府材料和最近的举措进行批判性分析，揭示了在动员公民支持电子支付方面所采用的话语实践。围绕数字支付的讨论与围绕经济竞争力、技术进步和公共健康与安全的叙述紧密相连，并深深植根于限制真正公民参与塑造智能支付技术的技术官僚治理理念。本文认为，这种话语框架代表了一个错失的建设真正以公民为中心的智慧城市的机会。这种重新定位需要更多自下而上和基于基层的治理模式，将智能公民重新定义为更加关注数字技术背后的情感和社会背景。