By ARTHUR LEE

THE banking hall window at DBS Bank's Shenton Way branch is now brightly decorated with the warm colours of the Chinese New Year.

The bank also started the exchange of new notes for the festive season at all its 80 or so branches yesterday.

Each customer can exchange up to $400. More temporary staff will be mobilised closer to the festive period to help serve anticipated higher numbers of customers.

At some of the larger branches, DBS has set up special counters just for exchanging new notes.

Customers were also given the newly designed hongbao, or red packet, for this year which comes in a set of three.

Lined up together, they show a 'mural' of Singapore's neighbourhood, HDB flats, children in an extended family and Smiley, the POSB mascot.

To thank customers for their support, DBS has prepared almost 1.6 million packs of hongbaos (both DBS & POSB), to be given out to their customers while stocks last.

This article was first published in The Business Times.