The Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) is one of Singapore’s autonomous universities, offering over 300 undergraduate, graduate, and Continuing Education and Training (CET) programmes and nurturing more than 50,000 graduates to date. Since partnering with Accredify, SUSS has issued over 26,500 verifiable digital certificates and transcripts — and cut its issuance administration from four months to two weeks.
Impact at a glance
The challenge: credentials that work beyond the campus
SUSS needed an all-in-one solution for issuing tamper-proof, verifiable digital credentials in the OpenCerts and OpenBadges standards. OpenCerts is aligned with Singapore’s National Skills Framework and storable in the national Career & Skills Passport, so the choice of standard determined whether SUSS credentials would plug into the national ecosystem or sit outside it.
The university also wanted digital wallet capabilities, so learners could organise and access their credentials from a single place, with integration to government initiatives like the Career & Skills Passport and industry platforms like SEEK Pass. Beyond the practical requirements, this would bring SUSS closer to the Groningen Declaration Network’s vision of secure and ethical exchange of digital student data globally.
The stakes were not merely administrative. Institutions exploited for credential fraud risk their graduates being passed over for interviews, as hiring managers learn to distrust the institution’s brand — a problem made worse by the cost and time it takes to authenticate non-verifiable credentials.
The solution: issue once, verify anywhere
SUSS was onboarded onto Accredify’s Verifiable Credentials platform, reaching full operational capacity in three months across three departments. The working team can now create custom certificate and transcript templates, issue credentials to entire cohorts in a single batch, and manage them after issuance — with automated emails, revocation capabilities, and analytics built in.
On its website, SUSS deployed a self-serve verification ePortal powered by Accredify. Anyone — an employer, another university, a licensing body — can drag and drop a SUSS credential and instantly confirm its authenticity, that it has not been tampered with, and that it is still valid. No email to the registrar, no waiting.
Because the credentials are dynamic, SUSS retains control after issuance. If a credential is revoked, that status is reflected the moment anyone verifies it — which lets SUSS run time-limited credentialing, ensuring learners remain equipped with current skills while protecting the university’s standing as a top-tier training institution.
Alignment with the National Skills Framework means SUSS graduates showcase their skills according to nationally recognised standards, while SEEK Pass compatibility lets them stand out with verified credentials on major job marketplaces like Jobstreet — putting millions of job opportunities within reach.
With OpenBadges, available on Accredify’s solution, we can explore many more education-related use cases; for instance, to represent skill-based achievements, promote gamification in learning, and showcase non-academic activities such as internships.
The results: weeks become days, months become weeks
The Office of Academic Services halved its credentialing costs and saves over 160 manhours a year. SUSS Academy cut administrative costs by 70% and administrative time by 87.5%. Across the university, transitioning fully to digital certificates has:
- Reduced issuance administration from 4 months to 2 weeks
- Eliminated physical storage requirements, improving environmental sustainability
- Simplified creation, issuance, revocation, updating, and resending of certificates for administrative staff
- Given students instant credential receipt and on-demand access
- Given graduates a competitive edge on platforms like LinkedIn and SEEK Pass
For learners, the benefit compounds: on-demand authentication speeds up job applications and improves placement rates, because employers no longer wait days for a registrar to confirm a qualification.
What’s next: 68,000 more credentials, and beyond SUSS
The Office of Academic Services, Student Records, and SUSS Academy are preparing to retrospectively issue over 68,000 certificates to past graduates, and the solution is set to expand to further departments such as the Teaching and Learning Centre. This organic growth across departments — each with its own requirements and workflows — is a strong signal of the solution’s flexibility.
The partnership is now reaching beyond institutional boundaries: SUSS is in discussions with other autonomous universities to explore a cross-institutional e-Portfolio solution powered by Accredify’s technology, positioning SUSS at the forefront of educational innovation in Singapore’s higher education landscape.
This is the first and only Singapore homegrown solution that supports both OpenCerts and OpenBadges standards. We are very pleased working with our visionary partner, Accredify, who collaborates with job portals such as Jobstreet to expand the value of the solution to a broader ecosystem.
The SUSS–Accredify partnership shows what verifiable credentials deliver in practice: streamlined administration with significant cost and time savings on one side, and graduates equipped with instantly verifiable, nationally aligned credentials on the other. New to verifiable credentials? Our Verifiable Credentials guide explains how the verification works under the hood.