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Singapore leads Asia’s payments hub race, report says
Singapore has strengthened its position as a payments hub in Asia, according to the “Payments’ State of Play 2026” report by the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) and PwC Singapore.
Over 98% of adults are banked, with digital wallets and real-time payments dominating transactions.
In 2024, FAST system transaction volumes hit 500 million, a 31% rise from the previous year. The digital payments market value reached US$39.4 billion in 2023.
Singapore also leads regional cross-border payments through initiatives like Project Nexus and bilateral linkages with Thailand and Malaysia.
The country accounts for over 70% of Southeast Asia’s SGD-pegged stablecoin market.
The report highlights ongoing trends such as cross-border interoperability, while noting challenges such as fraud, with scam-related losses reaching SGD 840.3 million (US$661.18 million) in late 2025.
🔗 Source: The Singapore Fintech Association
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
The shift to digital wallets comes from clear consumer habits and shared rails
- Digital wallets have taken the lead in e-commerce at 39%, ahead of credit cards at 37% 1.
- A decade ago, credit cards held 70% of e-commerce transactions, while wallets sat at 7% 1.
- Growth comes from bank-led options like DBS PayLah!, super-app payments such as GrabPay, plus global services like Apple Pay 1.
- Government-backed rails support this, including SGQR which combined 27 payment schemes into one QR code used by 300,000 merchants 2.
Beyond retail payments, Singapore is becoming a trial ground for tokenised settlement infrastructure
- Retail payments are well developed, while regional influence increasingly comes from wholesale and cross-border settlement systems.
- Stablecoin activity has picked up, with over 70% of Southeast Asia’s SGD-pegged stablecoin market tied to Singapore, alongside wider work on tokenised settlement.
- Singapore now serves as a proving ground for a “digital money triangle” that links tokenised deposits, regulated stablecoins, plus wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) 3.
- JPMorgan has processed more than $2 trillion in notional value on its blockchain-based Kinexys platform, which suggests institutional use is moving past one-off pilots 3.
- Programs such as BLOOM and mBridge are testing interoperability across tokenised money and central-bank systems, while Partior is live as a bank-backed settlement network 3.
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