NTU Pass wins Singapore Digital Experience of the Year - Education at Asian Experience Awards 2026

NTU Pass moved 60,000 students, staff, and partners from physical cards to a single digital identity app across the university community.

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has won the Singapore Digital Experience of the Year - Education award at the Asian Experience Awards 2026, for NTU Pass, its campus-wide digital identity app.

The achievement goes well beyond launching an app. NTU Singapore had to bring together 19 legacy access systems, replace physical door readers across a live campus, and move 60,000 students, staff, and partners onto a new digital credential.

From fragmented access to one digital identity

Before NTU Pass, campus access relied on physical cards and multiple separate systems. New staff could wait up to nine days for a card, whilst lost cards had to be cancelled and replaced. Different access environments also operated on separate infrastructure and databases, a fragmented setup that was complex to maintain and difficult to manage at scale.

NTU Pass introduced a single digital credential for the campus community, supported by a unified access platform. Getting there involved two major challenges.

Consolidating the legacy environment. Nineteen separate access systems, covering academic buildings, research labs, residential halls, and University partners, were unified onto a single platform. This required NTU Singapore to reconcile different data structures, permission levels and hardware standards built up over years.

Replacing infrastructure on a live campus. The physical layer also had to change. New NTU Pass-compatible readers were being installed whilst students and staff continued using the facilities every day. To date, 4,500 readers have been replaced across 50 buildings. The full rollout will cover 17,000 access points across 152 buildings by 2027.

Turning infrastructure change into a better campus experience

The transformation has changed the campus experience in several tangible ways: 

Access from day one: New staff, students, and partners can receive their digital credentials within minutes, replacing a process that previously took up to nine days.

Fewer physical cards: NTU Pass removes the need to issue around 22,000 replacement cards each year. Digital credentials are tied to the user's device and protected by biometric authentication, reducing the risks associated with lost or shared physical cards.

Real-time security visibility: Centralised monitoring gives the university's security team live status information across access points, including alerts when doors are offline or need attention.

A user-centric transition: Moving an entire campus community to a new way of accessing facilities required more than technical deployment. NTU Singapore ran campus roadshows and set up a network of ground champions to help users navigate the change. In a post-rollout survey, 81% of respondents rated the transition as smooth and positive, with an overall experience rating of 8.3 out of 10. 

The harder part of digital transformation

The technology behind a digital credential is only part of the challenge. The more complex task is integrating systems built at different times, aligning stakeholders with different needs, and replacing physical infrastructure whilst campus operations continue as per normal.

NTU Pass shows what that looks like in practice: one identity, one connected access experience, and infrastructure built around the vision of a modern, digitally connected campus.

The Asian Experience Awards recognises the ingenious initiatives of creative companies delivering meaningful brand experiences. It applauds unique, standout, and innovative experience initiatives launched for clients, potential customers, or employees.