Singapore witnessed some major developments in the financial sector during 2021. The Fintech News Singapore published a report this year highlighting the same. Christian König, Founder of Fintech News Network, has stated that the startup-focused investor ecosystem of the island nation paved way for an exciting financial year. According to him, Singapore will continue to pioneer innovations in the financial services arena.
Key takeaways from the report are summarized below.
Payment Statistics and Preference for Digital Banking
PayNow, an electronic instant fund transfer service, doubled its corporate registrations in the past year. There was also a manifold increase in the usage of mobile wallets for carrying out transactions. The report also foresees that digital wallets will replace credit cards as the most preferred mode of payment in Singapore.
Singapore is also adopting measures to make cross-border transactions smooth and easy. The tie-up of PayNow with Thailand’s real-time retail payment system PromptPay enables the quick transfer of money between the customers of the participating banks. This venture also reduced the processing time for cross-border transactions to a few minutes. Plans of linking PayNow with Malaysia’s DuitNow and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) are also in the pipeline.
Singapore’s Project Ubin and Project Dunbar are also paving the way for hassle-free cross-border transactions.
During the pandemic, Singaporeans showed a preference for digital banking to carry out transactions. The report states that 68% of the population opted to use digital channels to engage in financial dealings.
More people in Singapore are opting for Buy Now Pay Later services. Seven key companies in this sector are Rely, Hoolah, Atome, Pace, ShopeePay, Grab PayLater and favePAY.
Sustainable Finance
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is promoting sustainable financing through the Green Finance Action Plan. It has identified five key areas to support green financing:
- Environmental risk management
- Green financial solutions
- Green research and talent development
- Standardizing taxonomy
- Funding green fintech solutions and projects
The role of Alibaba Cloud in accelerating growth of the finance sector
Dr. Derek Wang, Singapore General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, mentioned that they are the gatekeepers of trust put by the customers in the financial firms. He revealed that most fintech firms and Financial Service Institutions (FSIs) do not have the resources, platforms and infrastructure that comply with the rising demand for security in this sector. Alibaba cloud helps provide a secure environment with more reliability and zero downtime to the FSIs and Fintech firms. FinTech and multi-finance companies are utilizing the infrastructure, platform and services offered by Alibaba Cloud for speeding up their innovations.
Some ways by which it promotes the growth of fintech services are:
- The cloud infrastructure improves responsiveness, aids business expansion and provides better compliance.
- Cloud-native databases improve flexibility, efficiency and strengthen security.
- Easy data migration.
- Secured customer data backup and disaster recovery.
- End-to-end data protection.
Key Fintech Developments in 2021
- Hong-Kong-based Futu launched its investment platform Moomoo in Singapore and is attracting a large number of clients.
- ZA Tech opened New Asia Fintech Center in Singapore.
- Tiger Brokers Singapore, launched in Feb 2020 is continuing its strong growth among its user base.
- Since its launch in 2017, Stashaway has generated a good amount of returns in the previous years.
- The Singapore-based peer-to-peer lending platform ‘Validus’ received S$50million from Fasanara Capital to boost SME lending in Singapore.
- As part of a 10-year multi-project strategic partnership, Atome received financing of US$500 million from Standard Chartered.
- Matrixport closed its Series C round of funding with a valuation of US$1billion since its formation 2 years ago.
- Nium raised more than US$200 million in fresh funding, becoming a rare unicorn fintech in the country.
- Singaporean insurtech firm ‘Bolttech’ became a unicorn startup within one year of its launch.
Source: Singapore Fintech report 2022
Featured Image Credit: Singapore Fintech report 2022
