Digital wealth platform Syfe is rolling out a new feature allowing users to co-manage investment portfolios and build shared wealth. The product is currently live for an early-access group, with a full public launch expected in the coming weeks. The launch of Syfe joint accounts in Singapore targets what the platform describes as a “coordination gap” in retail wealth management. According to a recent company survey, more than 40% of respondents currently invest separately and struggle to coordinate their finances manually. Furthermore, the survey revealed that a single person manages all investments in 30% of households. This setup often leads to reduced transparency and unequal financial literacy between partners. When asked if couples should have full visibility into shared investments, 62% of respondents agreed. Syfe’s shared accounts allow two individuals to track performance, contribute funds, and make withdrawals within a single app interface. Users can also switch between their individual and shared portfolios seamlessly. Unlike traditional banking setups, the wealthtech platform does not impose minimum balance requirements or require users to hold accredited investor status. Customers can set up specific portfolios tailored to shared goals, such as buying a home or funding a child’s education. Company data indicates a shift in how retail investors view shared finances. While traditional joint bank accounts are often associated with paying daily expenses, 55% of Syfe’s surveyed users cited building long-term family wealth as their primary motivation. Additionally, one in three respondents plan to use the shared accounts to save for their children or facilitate intergenerational wealth transfer. Jack Prickett “Investing as a family shouldn’t feel like a second job,” said Jack Prickett, Chief Commercial Officer at Syfe. He noted that the platform aims to provide the necessary digital infrastructure to remove friction, allowing couples and families to shift towards growth-oriented portfolios.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by naskawin888 via Magnific The post Syfe Launches Joint Accounts to Boost Shared Wealth Building in Singapore appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Vietnamese merchant management platform SoBanHang has raised at least US$3.8 million in a pre-Series A round to expand its digital services for micro-enterprises across the region, according to regulatory filings and a report by DealStreetAsia. The round was anchored by Malaysia’s Hong Leong Bank, which invested US$2 million, while OSK-SBI Venture Partners contributed US$1.5 million. Existing backers FEBE Ventures and Antler also participated, filings with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority showed. Sources told DealStreetAsia that the fundraising is still ongoing. The latest financing comes three years after SoBanHang raised US$4 million in seed funding in 2021 across two tranches. Founded in mid-2021 by brothers Hai Long Bui and Hai Nam Bui, Finan developed SoBanHang to help family-run and micro businesses manage sales, operations, and customer transactions via smartphones. The funding follows a recent strategic partnership between Shinhan Bank Vietnam and Finan, which launched Shinhan Store, an integrated platform combining banking services with merchant management tools. The initiative aims to address Vietnam’s fragmented small-business ecosystem, where many merchants still rely on manual bookkeeping or multiple standalone apps, limiting efficiency and access to formal credit. Through Shinhan Store, merchants can manage sales, track revenue, handle inventory, and issue electronic invoices while also opening bank accounts and applying for loans within the same application. Banks and fintech players are increasingly targeting Vietnam’s underserved micro-business segment, which remains large but highly under-digitised, as competition intensifies around embedded financial services.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by freepik via Magnific The post Vietnam’s SoBanHang Raises US$3.8M Pre-Series A to Expand Micro-Business Tools appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

What does the digital assets market look like to someone who’s seen money move from within some of the world’s largest traditional financial institutions and from one of crypto’s most recognised infrastructure companies? For Kirit Bhatia, Chief Digital Assets Officer at Banking Circle, this is the unique vantage point he brings into his role. Before joining Banking Circle in late 2025, Bhatia spent years across JPMorgan Chase, RBS, and Ripple, moving between the old and new worlds of financial infrastructure. He’s now applying that experience at Banking Circle, a fully licensed bank with central bank clearing rails that processes EUR1+ trillion in annual payment volumes across 24 currencies. Banking Circle already sits inside the institutional payments flow, serving 750+ financial institutions, payment companies and marketplaces that need money to move across borders quickly, reliably and under regulatory scrutiny. That makes Bhatia’s role less about watching the digital asset market evolve from the sidelines, and more about asking how regulated institutions can bring digital asset solutions to market with the trust, security and regulatory layer of a bank. For Bhatia, the digital assets question is tied to how regulated institutions can use new rails without sacrificing the trust, compliance, and operational discipline that banking depends on. His background carries weight at a time when stablecoins and digital assets are being tested against a harder question. Can these rails operate inside regulated financial services, solve customer pain points and improve parts of the banking system that have remained slow, costly, and fragmented for years? Bhatia’s seen where traditional banking is resilient, where it remains constrained, and where newer digital asset infrastructure may have a credible role to play. Kirit Bhatia “I end up in this unique position where I appreciate how traditional banking works and also how new technology works,” he said during an exclusive interview with Fintech News Network on the stablecoins in banking. For Bhatia, the work begins by stepping back to look at the bigger picture. “I have to start at the 30,000-foot level and think about where the landscape is. What technology innovations are happening in financial services? What’s the direction of travel? Where’s regulation at, and importantly, what are the pain points the customer and the market are feeling?” Stablecoins Are Having Their Infrastructure Moment Stablecoins have quickly moved from being discussed as a future disruption to entering a more crucial phase. How will it be embedded into regulated financial services, with the controls, permissions, and operating standards institutions require? “We’re living through the shaping of that reality right now,” he said. “It’s sometimes hard to appreciate that when you’re in it and actually shaping it.” Stablecoin’s trajectory is no longer a subject of dispute. Total stablecoin transaction volumes crossed US$33 trillion in 2025, and in February 2026, monthly stablecoin volumes overtook the Automated Clearing House network for the first time. Yet volume is just one part of the story. Stablecoins are moving in the same conversation as banking rails, treasury flows, settlement infrastructure, and cross-border payments. The market is now seeking to know whether regulated institutions can use it reliably and at scale. That is where Banking Circle’s position becomes relevant. Banking Circle, for one, operates an internal ledger on which client-to-client fiat transfers settle 24/7 instantly, removing some of the T+1 and T+2 lags that have traditionally defined correspondent banking. Bhatia sees digital asset settlement as an extension of that infrastructure. In April 2026, Banking Circle launched stablecoin settlement services following its Crypto-Asset Service Provider (CASP) licence approval, with direct integration between fiat currencies and USDC, USDG and EURI through its core platform. The proposition is faster settlement inside a regulated banking environment. “Whether it’s traditional fiat or digital assets, the compliance integrity is the foundation that a bank like us sits on. It’s a non-negotiable. It’s our permission to operate,” he said. The principles, he shares, do not change between fiat and digital asset rails. The tooling does. On-chain AML screening, travel rule compliance, custody technology, and the regulatory permissions themselves (e.g. CASP in Europe and the Digital Payment Token framework in Singapore) all require new systems and skill sets. Banking Circle, he said, has spent the last couple of months embedding those capabilities into its core banking platform. “At the Banking Circle, we’re fortunate that we’ve already built new tooling and new systems over the last 18 months, and embedded these key pieces of infrastructure into our core banking platform. We will continue to add more and more as we bring more solutions to the market.” Should Banks Fear Stablecoins, Or Fear Standing Still? If stablecoins are settling into the centre of wholesale payments, the next question is what that means for the banks they touch. In the 2026 Global Outlook for Banking and Financial Markets IBM report, a survey of 500 financial services executives sketched out the risks plainly. According to IBM, if major corporations respond by issuing their own stablecoins, a scenario 42% of executives see as likely, banks could see transaction fees evaporate, deposits bases shrink, and customer data slip away. To stay in the game, banks might need to evolve into full-service providers for tokenized operations. 63% of corporate banking executives see the provision of tokenised services as their primary role in the future. Bhatia does not dismiss any of this, but is certainly wary of letting fear set the frame. “Fear-based framings are never helpful,” he said. “Big technology breakthroughs have always generated healthy doses of fear of bad outcomes.” He draws the parallel with the early internet, when most of the disruption anxieties were genuine, but never the full picture. The internet did displace old models, yes. It also built new economies, new jobs, and new opportunities on top of them. Stablecoins and digital assets sit in similar territory for him. The lesson to learn here is that no financial institution can afford to stand still. “Whether you’re a bank or any type of business, constant adoption, adaptation and evolving is just a requirement. You can’t stand still.” Bhatia said that the industry still has work to do alongside regulators on managing the unintended consequences of digital asset adoption. But the direction of travel, according to him, is settled. Any technology that lowers cost, supports 24/7 global settlement, removes cut-off times, and makes commerce more efficient deserves a serious look. For Banking Circle, that vision lands on a hybrid model. “We see the future of banking as hybrid and interoperable, where our customers have the option to transact on the best rail that is available in the market,” he said. “Whether that’s traditional fiat or whether that’s tokenised fiat, that’s okay.” Who’s Accountable When Agents Start Paying with Stablecoins? The next frontier for stablecoins may involve autonomous systems. According to the Cambridge Tokenized Money Report, AI integration is an emerging but largely underdeveloped area in the intersection of tokenized money with AI and autonomous systems. Early indicators include Google’s announcement of Agent to Payment (A2P) capabilities supporting stablecoins for autonomous agent transactions. This raises the bigger question for the industry: what happens when bots, agents or autonomous systems begin initiating payments? Bhatia sees this space as important in growth, but it is still nascent. “Agents and payments are obviously a hot topic right now,” he said. “Everyone’s jumping on it.” Still, he is careful not to describe it as a near-term unlock. To him, agentic payments today resembles where crypto was almost a decade ago: full of experimentation, attention, and possibilities, but still far from the point where market demand, regulation, infrastructure and operating models have properly converged. “It feels very much like eight years ago, where crypto was,” he said. “It was an innovation. Lots of people were talking about it, but to actually bring it to life, to where we are today, it has taken almost a decade.” At a practical level, Bhatia said Banking Circle is not yet seeing direct customer demand for bot-initiated payments. “We don’t have any customers asking us to process payments for their bots.” The second issue he points out is more fundamental: what is the legal and regulatory status of the agent itself? If an autonomous system initiates, routes or executes a stablecoin payment, the industry still needs to determine who is responsible for the action. Bhatia compares it to autonomous taxis. Experimentation is useful, and the technology may be promising, but the real test comes when something goes wrong. In payments, these could range from an erroneous transaction to a fraud event or a dispute over authorisation. “Ultimately, when things go wrong, who is accountable?” That may be the biggest hurdle for agentic payments. It needs an accountability model that regulators, banks, payment firms and customers can trust. Until then, autonomous stablecoin payments will remain an intriguing frontier. Kirit Bhatia is scheduled to speak at Money20/20 Europe 2026 on two topics: “How Far Will Stablecoins Go on Public Blockchains?” and “Part 1: The Future of Global Money Movement.” Featured image edited by Fintech News Singapore based on image by mrsiraphol on Magnific The post Stablecoins Have Won the Volume Game. Now Comes the Harder Part. appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Yuno has partnered with digital payment institution Triple-A to enable stablecoin payment acceptance for its global merchant network. Through a single API integration, Yuno allows businesses to process stablecoin transactions alongside traditional fiat payment methods. The setup uses Triple-A’s regulated infrastructure, meaning merchants can receive digital currency payments without holding or managing the assets themselves. Triple-A holds a Major Payment Institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), as well as regulatory approvals in the USand Europe. The company currently supports more than 1,000 enterprise customers to process digital payments. Juan Pablo Ortega “Across industries like SaaS, gaming, e-commerce, travel, and the creator economy, businesses are serving increasingly global customer bases who expect more flexible ways to pay,” said Juan Pablo Ortega, CEO and Founder of Yuno. Ortega added that the integration ensures businesses can meet consumer demands easily while simplifying cross-border payments to drive growth. Stablecoins are gaining traction as a settlement tool for cross-border commerce, particularly in markets with limited card infrastructure or high foreign exchange friction. The joint solution aims to improve conversion rates at checkout while offering faster settlement times compared to correspondent banking rails. Eric Barbier “Stablecoins are quickly becoming a foundational part of modern payment infrastructure,” said Eric Barbier, Founder and CEO of Triple-A. “With our regulated framework and Yuno’s global platform, we are making it simple for businesses to accept digital currencies in a secure, compliant way.” The partnership follows Yuno’s recent expansion in the APAC region, which included opening a regional headquarters in Singapore.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by mrsiraphol via Magnific The post Yuno Taps Triple-A to Bring Stablecoin Payments to Merchants appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Singapore is advancing legislative amendments to establish an SGX Nasdaq dual listing framework aimed at improving the competitiveness of its domestic equities market. The Securities and Futures (Amendment) Bill was introduced at its Second Reading on Thursday (May 7), according to a speech published by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) delivered by Chee Hong Tat, Minister for National Development and Deputy Chairman of MAS. The Bill sets up a regulatory framework to support dual listing arrangements, including the new Global Listing Board. The framework allows issuers to access capital across both markets through a single prospectus and harmonised regulatory requirements. Chee Hong Tat “We are creating new pathways for issuers to access deeper pools of international capital while broadening investors’ access to new opportunities,” Chee said. The framework allows MAS to align selected regulatory requirements between Singapore and eligible overseas exchanges that meet international standards. For the Global Listing Board, MAS identifies the United States as a qualifying jurisdiction. Key areas of alignment include prospectus disclosures, listing timelines, and post-listing market practices. MAS will also have the power to adopt certain US safe harbour provisions for market conduct, while continuing to retain enforcement authority over any offences occurring in Singapore. Beyond dual listings, the Bill introduces broader measures to streamline the public offering process. Issuers can engage retail investors based on preliminary prospectuses to gauge demand, and authorities have clarified the rules for Depositary Receipt offerings. The reforms form part of ongoing changes to Singapore’s capital markets framework, ensuring the local ecosystem remains attractive for regional fintech and tech companies seeking international capital.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by ZKang123 via Wikipedia and brilian via Magnific The post Singapore Pushes SGX Nasdaq Dual Listing Bill to Ease Cross-Border IPOs appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

For decades, the world’s financial system has been running on a robust yet highly intricate infrastructure. Payment rails, settlement systems, regulatory and governance frameworks, and trading infrastructure are all moving parts of the same grid. Together, they enable financial value to move, be held, and be settled across borders, institutions and asset classes. A new layer is now being integrated into that grid by banks and non-banks alike for digital assets. Crucially, as McKinsey notes in its A New Era of Fintech report, “the (digital) assets gaining most attention are those that behave, monetise, and integrate like financial infrastructure.” Against this backdrop, the Financial Grid Fireblocks report offers a global view of where digital asset development stands today, drawing on an expansive 2026 survey of 600+ decision-makers across financial institutions and corporations, including those on digital asset infrastructure in the Asia Pacific. APAC Leads in Digital Asset Infrastructure Spending The survey indicates a regional divergence in how financial institutions are approaching digital assets. In the Asia Pacific, financial institutions are way ahead in digital asset adoption, with a pathway that is distinctly different, too. 62% of APAC institutions have already committed budgets for digital asset infrastructure, a number that eclipses North America’s 27%. To put it plainly, for every North American bank putting real money behind digital asset infrastructure, more than two APAC banks are doing the same. Spending appetite is also more advanced, with nearly eight in 10 APAC institutions allocating more than US$1 million. The regional modal sits between US$1 and US$5 million. Amy Zhang, Head of APAC at digital asset infrastructure provider Fireblocks, shared, Amy Zhang “What stands out most from the data is the combination of speed and conviction. APAC institutions aren’t just exploring: 36% are already in external pilots with clients, more than double the global average (20%).” That commitment seems to imply that the region’s next wave of production deployments could be larger than anywhere else in the world. Also, unlike North America, where regulatory clarity remains a key precondition or Europe, where MiCA is increasingly shaping the build agenda, APAC institutions appear to be responding more directly to local market demand. New customer acquisition and market expansion are the leading strategic drivers for APAC institutions, cited by 46% of respondents, the highest share of any region. This could suggest that digital asset adoption in APAC is less compliance-led and more growth-led in infrastructure decisions. The regulatory picture is also becoming more constructive. Globally, 96% of financial institutions expect upcoming regulation to be favourable, with frameworks from MAS and HKMA cited as examples for this shift. APAC’s Digital Asset Build is Taking On a Different Shape APAC’s infrastructure priorities also suggest that the region has its own distinct digital asset roadmap. Amy commented, “The most telling signal is where APAC diverges on use case priorities. Every other region globally ranks 24/7 settlement at the top. In APAC, digital asset custody takes that spot, at 84%. Custody is the foundation everything else is built on, and that points to institutions building for the long term, not just running a pilot.” This distinction is important, given that APAC’s infrastructure priorities point to a different kind of digital asset build. Tokenised money market funds and tokenised securities each lead the region’s asset mix at 21%, making APAC the only region where capital markets instruments sit at the top. Own institution stablecoin issuance, by contrast, stands at 6%, the lowest among the regions surveyed in the Financial Grid Fireblocks report. That capital markets and custody build is also reflected in what APAC institutions want from Financial Market Infrastructures (FMI). Some 55%  of the region’s respondents rate clearing as a central counterparty as a critical FMI role, the highest share of any region globally. The Global Build Is Well Funded, But Production Still Lags Beyond APAC, the global findings point to a broader market that has made the decision to build, but is still working towards fully converting that commitment into production capability. According to the Financial Grid report, 88% of financial institutions have allocated or will allocate budget to digital asset infrastructure in 2026. However, only 16% have reached the production stage. Source: The Financial Grid, Fireblocks That gap between investment and readiness indicates that while the decision to build has been made, the market is working on converting that commitment into live, scalable infrastructure. More than half of financial institutions are spending US$1 million or more on digital asset infrastructure this year, which places them beyond early experimentation, the report indicates. When operating at that level, budgets are deployed towards vendor selection, architectural decisions, systems integration, staffing, compliance work, and the operational foundations required for production. This is conversion spending, but it does not escape from the lens that production will remain the real test. The next phase will require hitting the right note on infrastructure decisions, architecture choices, and entry points. Featured image edited by Fintech News Singapore based on an image by End.ru99 on Magnific The post APAC To Outspend The World On Digital Asset Infrastructure In 2026 appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

What is stopping businesses from fully tapping a US$336 billion cross-border payments opportunity? Ask the merchants trying to sell beyond their home markets, and the answer often comes back to infrastructure. They would say that payments may look simple at the point of sale, but the work behind it is not. They grow heavier with every new corridor. Each market adds another layer of work behind the payment itself, and those hidden demands can narrow margins long before a business reaches meaningful scale. Kozen Tan, CEO, Singapore of LianLian Global, sees the consequences of this fragmentation firsthand, particularly as businesses across the Asia Pacific reassess the financial infrastructure behind their global expansion plans. Kozen Tan “Payment security and compliance trust are no longer just back-office concerns — they have become key front-end factors that influence whether customers complete a purchase,” he said. Those shortcomings increasingly show up in revenue performance. With global cart abandonment rates often exceeding 70%, merchants can lose potential buyers quickly when payment experiences feel unfamiliar or fail to reflect local expectations. Cross-border payment providers are now being judged less narrowly, especially as AI-powered capabilities move from concept to commercial reality. Cross-Border Growth Still Breaks at the Infrastructure Layer. But Why? The burden grows market by market, as merchants deal with more operational work behind the scenes before a payment ever reaches completion. A business may find demand overseas and still struggle to make the economics work once the hidden costs of moving money between markets start shaping daily decisions. Now, growth plans can look clean on paper, but the machinery behind international payments often determines whether expansion remains manageable. LianLian Global enters the story through this less visible part of cross-border commerce. Its platform is built around the work merchants often have to piece together when they expand internationally, covering the financial processes behind collections, payouts, foreign exchange and merchant operations. The aim is to make expansion feel a little less fragmented. A merchant that would otherwise manage several disconnected payment relationships can operate through a more consolidated structure, giving finance teams better control over how money moves between markets. Smaller companies feel that difference most sharply, as reduced operational complexity gives management teams more time to build demand in new markets instead of wrestling with payments infrastructure. Singapore’s Strategic Role in LianLian Global’s Southeast Asia Push A model like that depends heavily on regulatory credibility, particularly in Southeast Asia, where payment habits and supervisory expectations can vary sharply between markets. But why Singapore? Kozen explained that the Lion City gives LianLian a practical base for that work. The company established its local entity in 2018, before its subsidiary STARLINK secured a Major Payment Institution licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore in 2021. The licence gives LianLian a stronger foundation to support regional payment activity from one of Asia’s most established financial hubs, while also helping the company build trust with partners operating in neighbouring markets. The licence given by Singapore also sits within a wider regulatory footprint. LianLian holds 67 payment licences and related qualifications globally, a network Kozen Tan sees as central to how the company builds confidence with merchants and partners. “Holding payment licenses in multiple countries and regions shows we fully meet local financial regulatory rules,” he pointed out. Merchants entering unfamiliar markets often need reassurance before they commit to new payment arrangements. Regulatory coverage can reduce uncertainty around onboarding and local service adaptation, while giving payment providers more room to serve different markets without weakening oversight. In cross-border payments, trust has to travel with the money. AI Moves Closer to the Core of Cross-Border Payments Licensing also gives LianLian a foundation, but Kozen believes the next stage of competition will depend on intelligence built into the infrastructure itself. “We believe that valuable fintech companies in the future must be AI-native.” Throughout financial services, AI is moving from experimental projects into the operating core. LianLian is applying that shift to the areas where cross-border merchants often lose time, including localisation and the preparation of market-ready materials. The company’s Loop AI platform shows how that strategy is taking shape. Built for cross-border merchants, the platform supports translation in more than 100 languages and helps businesses produce content for overseas markets faster than traditional workflows allow. According to Kozen: “Loop AI has helped merchants boost content production efficiency by dozens of times and cut operational labor costs by more than 50%.” Faster production cycles can help businesses respond to local demand with greater speed, particularly when they do not have large regional teams on the ground. The broader implication is that the future use of AI in cross-border payments may depend on the intelligence surrounding the payment flow, not only the movement of funds itself. Merchants need infrastructure that helps them operate in unfamiliar markets while keeping payment flows reliable. Preparing for Commerce Run by AI Agents LianLian’s ambitions also reach into a more automated version of global commerce, where AI agents could take on a larger role in commercial decision-making and financial execution. That future-facing strategy includes Agent Wallet, a product LianLian plans to launch for an era in which AI agents play a larger role in how businesses purchase, pay and manage value. Kozen describes the shift memorably: “We are shifting from ‘people looking for money’ to ‘money finding people’.” The idea points towards machine-to-machine financial infrastructure, where intelligent systems can carry out payments on behalf of users or businesses. At scale, that infrastructure could influence how companies manage liquidity and automated purchasing, making payment execution part of a wider system of intelligent commerce rather than a separate step after a commercial decision. Payments To Move Closer to the Operating Layer “We believe that payment companies in the future will evolve from cross-border payment specialists into AI-native builders of new global intelligent financial infrastructure,” LianLian Global’s CEO of Singapore highlighted. Transaction speed and pricing still matter, although they no longer tell the full story for payment firms serving global merchants. Sustained advantage will increasingly come from pairing regulatory trust with operational intelligence, especially as businesses look for providers that can reduce compliance and execution gaps. LianLian’s strategy suggests a payment company trying to move closer to the operating system behind global commerce, supporting the work that surrounds the movement of money. Where AI and Cross-Border Commerce May Be Heading For all the talk about frictionless global commerce, cross-border payments remain stubbornly local in practice. Each market brings its own rules and payment habits, while the cost of getting things wrong can be steep, especially for merchants without large compliance or finance teams. That reality helps explain LianLian Global’s AI push. The company is betting that payment infrastructure will need to become more intelligent to keep pace with the way businesses now expand, sell, and manage money internationally. AI will not replace the discipline required in cross-border finance. If anything, it raises the bar. Payment providers will need to prove that intelligence can support faster decision-making without weakening oversight, adding opacity, or leaving merchants dependent on systems they cannot properly interrogate. Speed will still matter, but the stronger differentiator may be the ability to make cross-border commerce feel less brittle for the merchants relying on it. LianLian now has to show that AI can deliver that resilience without adding another layer of complexity. Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on images provided by LianLian Global. The post How Could AI Ease the Friction in Cross-Border Payments? appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

CIMB Group has appointed Mak Joon Nien as CEO of Growth Markets and CEO of CIMB Singapore, subject to regulatory approval. Mak will be based in Singapore and will join the CIMB Group Executive Committee. In his role as CEO of Growth Markets, he will lead CIMB Singapore and oversee CIMB Thailand and CIMB Cambodia. His focus will be on accelerating business growth, strengthening cross-border connectivity and advancing regional opportunities. Novan Amirudin Novan Amirudin, Group CEO of CIMB Group, said, “Growth Markets is a key pillar of CIMB’s ASEAN strategy, and Mak’s deep regional experience, strong execution track record and client relationships will accelerate the group’s ambition in cross-border banking, regional wealth management and investment advisory. We look forward to working together to further strengthen CIMB’s ASEAN franchise and position the Group as top-of-mind ASEAN bank by 2030.” Mak has nearly three decades of international banking experience. He began his career at Standard Chartered in 1997 and spent 15 years in Singapore, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and leveraged finance. Mak later served as Managing Director responsible for private equity client coverage, before returning to Malaysia in 2017 to lead Standard Chartered’s Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking business. In 2022, he was appointed the first homegrown CEO of Standard Chartered Malaysia.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Frolopiaton Palm via Magnific The post CIMB Names Mak Joon Nien as Singapore CEO After Nearly Three Decades at StanChart appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Crypto.com has launched Crypto.com Travel, an in-app booking service powered by Bookit that gives eligible users another way to earn crypto rewards. The service is available through the Crypto.com App for Level Up subscribers in eligible jurisdictions, expanding the company’s benefits programme into travel and entertainment bookings. Crypto.com Travel gives users access to more than one million global travel listings, including hotels, flights, cruises, car rentals and experiences, as well as 20 million tickets. Level Up subscribers can earn up to 35% back in Crypto.com’s native CRO token on eligible bookings, depending on their tier, booking type and applicable terms. Basic Tier users can receive up to a 5% rebate. Rewards are issued after booking confirmation, although timing may vary by booking type and policy. Users may also earn up to an additional 6% back in CRO when paying with Crypto.com Pay, the Crypto.com Prepaid Visa Card or the Crypto.com Visa Signature Credit Card, where available and depending on tier. Eric Anziani Eric Anziani, President and Chief Operating Officer at Crypto.com, said, “This new initiative adds to what is already the most comprehensive rewards program in crypto and with additional benefits available through CRO, the cryptocurrency used in the Cronos ecosystem. By partnering with Bookit, we are delivering a seamless booking experience while enabling our users to turn everyday travel into meaningful crypto-based rewards.” Lin Dai Bookit CEO Lin Dai said, “Bookit is dedicated to helping major institutions launch travel and commerce platforms that pair world-class booking infrastructure with rewards designed for a new generation of consumers, as tokenisation reshapes consumer spending. Through our partnership with Crypto.com, we are enabling millions of users to earn CRO through everyday travel and experiences while bringing tokenised rewards and digital assets into mainstream commerce.” Crypto.com Travel also includes flexible booking options, such as refundable and pay-at-stay options, depending on availability. Rewards vary by Level Up tier, booking type and region, and are subject to terms and conditions.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on images by MD.Laik alom mollik via Magnific, and Crypto.com The post Crypto.com Brings Travel, Entertainment Bookings to Its App appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Temenos has launched two composable solutions that allow banks to modernise retail deposits and lending without replacing their full core systems. Temenos Composable Retail Deposits and Temenos Composable Retail Lending are cloud-native, standalone capabilities that connect to existing banking systems through APIs and event-driven integrations. The solutions are aimed at banks still running on legacy platforms that are costly to upgrade and difficult to integrate with newer technologies. Temenos said each capability has clear functional boundaries and its own deployment and upgrade cycle, helping banks make changes without affecting other systems. Barb Morgan Barb Morgan, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Temenos, said, “Banks need to modernise from legacy systems to stay competitive, but they cannot afford disruption. Our Composable Retail Deposits and Composable Retail Lending enable banks to upgrade critical core domains progressively without destabilising existing operations. It is a clear step forward in our composability strategy, focused on delivery, flexibility and customer value.”     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Frolopiaton Palm via Magnific   The post Temenos Launches Composable Solutions for Retail Deposits and Lending appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Anchorage Digital has launched Agentic Banking to help institutions control how AI agents access and move money. The company is also expanding its partnership with Google Cloud, combining Google’s AI and MPC key management infrastructure with Anchorage Digital’s regulated financial rails. The companies said Google’s Gemini models will support reasoning for agentic commerce decisions, while Anchorage Digital provides the regulated settlement layer. Agentic Banking lets institutions set spending policies, Know Your Agent identity standards and compliance checks before an AI agent completes a transaction. The platform supports settlement through stablecoins, fiat rails or tokenised credentials. Nathan McCauley Nathan McCauley, Co-Founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital, said, “We’re entering a world where agents don’t just inform decisions, they make them, and act on them. But for that to work in the real economy, agents need more than intelligence, they need regulated access to capital. Agentic Banking is the bridge between those two worlds: a system that brings trust, governance, and real financial rails to autonomous systems.” The partnership will also support cloud-based crypto key management and transaction infrastructure for institutional digital asset services. The companies are focusing on a B2B2C stack covering wallets, balance and transaction governance, trading, staking and operational workflows. It is designed to support stablecoins and digital assets such as BTC, ETH and SOL. Rich Widmann Rich Widmann, Head of Strategy, Web3 at Google Cloud, said, “As global financial institutions increasingly adopt digital assets, they require secure, scalable, and compliant infrastructure to build on. By pairing Anchorage Digital’s regulated digital asset capabilities with our scalable infrastructure, we’re helping to unlock the next wave of institutional adoption.” Anchorage Digital said the collaboration is aimed at helping institutions embed digital asset services into existing systems and prepare for agentic commerce.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by user850788 via Magnific The post Anchorage Digital Launches Agentic Banking With Google Cloud Partnership appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Singapore has received a strong assessment from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for its financial crime controls, even as the watchdog flagged areas to strengthen in foreign legal structures and some proliferation financing risks. The FATF published its latest mutual evaluation report on Singapore on 6 May 2026. The review assessed Singapore’s compliance with FATF standards and the effectiveness of its measures to counter money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing. Singapore was placed on Regular Follow-up, the monitoring process for FATF members that have performed well. The latest assessment also marks an improvement from Singapore’s previous evaluation in 2016, even though FATF standards have since been strengthened. The FATF highlighted Singapore’s governance structures, legal framework, risk understanding, supervision of obligated entities and law enforcement system supporting investigations and prosecutions. FATF Report Points to Areas for Further Strengthening in Singapore The report also identified areas for improvement. It noted that Singapore has a reasonably sound understanding of risks linked to legal persons and legal arrangements, and that law enforcement agencies can obtain beneficial ownership information in a timely manner. Building on this, the FATF said Singapore could further strengthen risk mitigation measures for foreign legal persons and foreign legal arrangements. The report also found that while financial institutions and virtual asset service providers generally understand their proliferation financing risks and obligations, awareness could improve in some sectors not traditionally subject to FATF requirements, such as representation offices of foreign flag States. Singapore’s authorities said they will study the FATF’s recommendations and assess how they can be adopted in a risk-proportionate way. They also plan to expand COSMIC, a platform launched in April 2024 that allows financial institutions to share information on customers showing red flags linked to potential financial crime. COSMIC will be expanded to allow information sharing in significant cases and include other major banks. The platform currently involves DBS, OCBC, UOB, Standard Chartered, Citibank and HSBC, and focuses on the misuse of legal persons, misuse of trade finance for illicit purposes and proliferation financing. Singapore said it remains committed to maintaining an effective financial crime regime while staying open to legitimate businesses and investors.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by jcomp via Magnific The post FATF Report Shows Singapore’s Financial Crime Controls Have Strengthened appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Crossfin is expanding its investment focus beyond South Africa as it looks for fintech opportunities in other emerging markets. The shift follows several exits in recent years, including Retail Capital’s sale to TymeBank in 2022, Adumo’s sale to Lesaka Technologies in 2024 and iKhokha’s sale to Nedbank in 2025. Since November 2021, Crossfin has returned more than R2 billion to shareholders and completed three exits. Founded in 2017 by Anton Gaylard and Dean Sparrow, Crossfin invests in high-growth and cash-generative fintech businesses that support access to financial services. Its portfolio focus includes payments, funding, banking, software and embedded finance. Anton Gaylard Anton Gaylard, Co-founder and Chief Exponential Officer at Crossfin, said fintech is entering a more mature phase. “Throughout Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, fintechs are expanding financial inclusion, reducing reliance on cash, and building payment systems that are increasingly sovereign and digitally native.” He added that the company’s recent exits have shaped its next phase of growth. “Our recent exits prove our ability to create and realise value,” says Gaylard. “Our next chapter is about building on that foundation: expanding from Africa into other high-growth emerging markets, backing exceptional teams, and creating fintech platforms that can endure.” Crossfin’s Expansion Into Emerging Markets Crossfin remains focused on Africa, where it continues to invest in businesses with strong teams, complementary capabilities and potential synergies. The group has also established a presence in Mauritius, where it has backed three businesses. In 2025, it launched a Singapore investment vehicle focused on Southeast Asia, the Middle East and beyond. “These markets share many of the structural characteristics that have shaped our approach – and subsequent success – in South Africa: fragmented financial services, large, underserved consumer and merchant segments, rapid digital adoption, and the need for better payments, funding, banking and insurance solutions,” explains Gaylard. “An important observation is that companies are often still trying to solve the same problems they were solving 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. What has changed is the technology available to solve those problems, and the scale those solutions now need to reach.” Over the past decade, Crossfin has focused mainly on financial inclusion. That remains a priority in markets where consumers and businesses still lack meaningful access to formal financial services. In maturing markets such as South Africa, the company sees a growing need for products that are more relevant to customers at different stages of financial adoption. “Crossfin’s model is built on partnership, including with banks, which remain critical stakeholders in scaling many fintech solutions responsibly and effectively. It’s also why our investment approach is evolving. Our track record has been built through a highly successful buy, optimise and exit model. Our next phase places greater emphasis on buy-and-build: taking a longer-term view of quality businesses, supporting founders through growth, and holding assets where the strategic value can compound over time.” says Gaylard. Building for the long term The company said this reflects a move from transactional value creation to platform value creation as it nears its tenth year in business. “Many founders are looking for investors who understand their market, respect what they have built, and can help them scale without forcing premature outcomes. For investors, it’s vital to note that emerging-market fintech still offers significant growth potential, but the strongest returns are likely to come from platforms that can combine disciplined capital allocation with practical operating experience and deep regional insight. This will form the basis of our investment philosophy as we enter our second decade in business.” Gaylard added that fintech investors are now looking beyond fast growth alone. “Today, a better question is: how defensible, scalable, and repeatable is the value being created?” Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by brilian via Magnific The post Crossfin Expands Investment Push Into Emerging Markets appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Digital banking in Southeast Asia was once built on speed. For quite some time, they held on to the formula of launch first, refine later, and it did work, especially during their early stages when their volumes were much lower, and regulators were still patching and adapting to digital models. But the stale recipe seems to show cracks as these banking institutions grow, particularly when artificial intelligence moves from experimentation into their core operations. That pressure is especially visible in larger ASEAN markets such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where things such as digital wallets and QR payments are becoming part of everyday financial activity rather than niche digital channels. For instance, in the Philippines, BSP data showed that InstaPay and PESONet processed a combined US$401.8 billion (PHP24.74 trillion) in 2025, up 42.02% from 2024, while InstaPay transaction volume surged to 4.66 billion transactions. In Indonesia, QRIS had reached 57 million users and 39.3 million merchants by the first half of 2025, with transactions hitting US$33.2 billion (IDR579 trillion), while fintech P2P lending outstanding financing grew 31.06% year-on-year to US$4.6 billion (IDR80.07 trillion) as of February 2025. This is where the regional growth story becomes more complicated. More customers means more products and more products leads to more digital touchpoints which is a good thing as it creates new opportunities, but they also place more pressure on the systems underneath. Thus, there’s no surprise when investment in AI shoots up, with spending by BFSIs in general expected to reach nearly US$97 billion by 2027. The reason could also be that financial institutions that fully embrace AI could realise a 15-percentage-point improvement in their efficiency ratios, as per research by PwC suggests. And yet, despite being in the 6th year after AI burst onto the scene, many of these initiatives are not making it past controlled environments. With spendings reaching the billion-dollar mark, it does not make sense to say that the issue revolves around the lack of ambition. No, the root of the problem sits deeper. When examined closely, it all boils down to how the systems are struggling to keep up. And a gap now slowly forms. Institutions are now stuck between what they are trying to deploy and what their infrastructure can reliably support. Growth is still happening, but it is bringing a different set of problems with it. The test now is not only whether digital financial institutions can grow, but whether they can manage that growth under tighter scrutiny and rising operational complexity. AI Is Moving Fast. Execution Is Not Across the region, banks are actively exploring artificial intelligence, particularly in areas like credit, risk, fraud detection and customer engagement. The early results can be encouraging where institutions can see that their models performing well in controlled environments, where data is clean and conditions are predictable. However, the difficulties usually appear when those same models are pushed into production. This is where many initiatives stall, often described within the industry as “pilot purgatory” which means that the limitation tends to sit in the surrounding environment rather than the models themselves. The gap is showing up globally as seen in BCG’s 2025 research which found that only 5% of companies are achieving AI value at scale, while 60% are seeing little or no material value despite investment. The finding is especially relevant for banks and fintech players in Southeast Asia, where AI ambitions often run into fragmented data, brittle workflows and systems that were never designed for real-time decisioning. While models can be developed within a few months, it can take much longer for frontline staff to trust them, understand their outputs and integrate them into daily workflows. Even when the technology is ready, organisational readiness often lags behind. In practice, AI only works when the underlying environment can support it, something many institutions are still working towards. When those conditions are not in place, performance becomes unreliable. In that sense, AI is acting less as a silver bullet and more as a diagnostic tool. It exposes weaknesses that were previously easier to work around. Despite these hurdles, leading institutions are beginning to demonstrate the financial upside of moving beyond experimentation. For example, DBS Bank reported generating approximately US$565 million in 2024 from more than 350 specific AI use cases deployed across its operations. Within wealth management, JP Morgan said that AI-powered coaching tools have helped advisors improve productivity, contributing to double-digit sales growth by reducing research time and enabling faster client engagement. More broadly, generative AI-driven personalisation is starting to translate into measurable financial impact, with some institutions reporting modest gains in revenue and improvements in return on equity as adoption scales. Where the Real Friction Sits Much of that friction can be traced back to how systems have evolved. Over the past decade, many institutions focused on improving what customers interact with, which has resulted to why most interactions we have today, feel faster and easier. Underneath those improvements, complexity has been gently accumulating. Much of the infrastructure still runs in silos, often disjointed and not fully connected, with each system maintaining its own version of the same information. Plus, in order to keep them aligned requires constant reconciliation, which most certainly takes time and introduces risk. Some technology leaders refer to this as an “integration tax”, a not-so a one-off issue that time and again accumulates as systems expand. This is where technical debt begins to crowd out innovation. Accenture estimates that banks can spend around 70% of their IT budgets on maintaining legacy systems, leaving a much smaller portion for new products, data infrastructure and AI enablement. Integrating just 200 legacy services can cost a bank US$480,000 in upfront expenses alone. This process consumes up to 1,000 developer days and commits the institution to an additional US$100,000 in yearly maintenance costs. Over time, banks slide into what some describe as “technical bankruptcy”, where maintenance work begins to paralyse innovation. The strain becomes more visible when AI is introduced. Legacy infrastructure, especially those built around batch processing, struggles to keep up with continuous data flows, and over time the results become harder to trust. What once felt manageable starts to limit how far an institution can go. True core banking modernisation tackles the problem at its starting point by replacing aging systems with a cloud-native, API-first platform. A modern core communicates seamlessly with AI models, but only if a governed data layer provides a real-time, read-only replica of the production database. Without this, AI risks drawing on poor-quality data, producing biased or inaccurate predictions. Regulation Is Tightening the Boundaries At the same time, regulators across Southeast Asia are raising expectations. Authorities including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Indonesia’s Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, and Bank Negara Malaysia are placing greater weight on how institutions manage their systems under stress, not just how quickly they innovate. Technology now has migrated away from the back office directly onto the balance sheet. Driven by recent enforcement actions, the perception of system failures has shifted from isolated incidents to material risks that carry direct consequences for capital requirements. The banking industry now treats system fragility as a tangible financial risk with a measurable impact on the balance sheet. The regulatory response to repeated service disruptions at DBS Bank illustrates this change in posture. Following a series of outages, the Monetary Authority of Singapore required the bank to hold additional US$ 1.2 billion in capital by increasing its operational risk-weighted assets. Similar signals are emerging across the region. In Malaysia, Bank Negara Malaysia imposed significant administrative monetary penalties in 2025 after several institutions failed to maintain high availability for critical systems. Bank Simpanan Nasional was fined US$251,000 (RM995,000), while Bank Kerjasama Rakyat Malaysia faced a penalty of US$719,000 (RM2.85 million) after repeated unplanned downtimes exceeded regulatory thresholds. In Indonesia, new rules introduced for 2025 require financial aggregators and digital service providers to maintain data and recovery centres within the country, with potential fines of up to US$57,000 (IDR1 billion) for non-compliance. The move made it clear that system fragility can directly affect a bank’s ability to deploy capital and expand. This changes how institutions approach compliance. It becomes embedded in day-to-day operations. Every change leaves a trace, every decision must be explainable, and if needed, reversible. That level of visibility is becoming part of the operating baseline. For Oradian, this is where the conversation around core banking modernisation becomes more urgent. The issue is no longer whether financial institutions can launch digital services quickly, but whether they can keep those services consistent, explainable and resilient as volumes rise. Antonio Separovic “Across Southeast Asia, we’re seeing a new phase of growth in digital financial services, one where institutions are moving from experimentation to building truly scalable, intelligent operations. AI is accelerating this shift, but it also highlights the importance of having the right foundation in place. At Oradian, we see that the institutions making the most progress are those investing in modern, cloud-native cores that act as a single source of truth, connecting data, operations, and compliance in real time. This foundation gives them the confidence to innovate faster, scale sustainably, and operate reliably as they grow,” said Antonio Separovic, CEO of Oradian. Why Growth Now Requires More Discipline Earlier phases of digital banking rewarded speed. Today, speed without control introduces a different kind of risk. As institutions scale, small inconsistencies can compound quickly. What works at a smaller volume can become unstable under pressure thus, fixing those issues later is rarely straightforward. Consequently, the strategic priority for core systems has shifted from rapid deployment to structural integrity. Rather than treating them as background infrastructure, there is a growing recognition that the core acts as the control centre of the organisation. It has become the definitive environment for operational integrity, ensuring that data, logic, and compliance are inseparable. Ultimately, the core system must serve as the primary site of institutional control. A stable foundation simplifies change management, and institutions that strike this balance prove their resilience by thriving under pressure. A More Deliberate Architecture Is Taking Shape Taken together, these pressures point to the same conclusion. AI needs trusted, real-time data. Scale requires systems that do not fracture as volumes rise. Regulation demands traceability, resilience and control. Core modernisation sits at the centre of all three because it determines whether innovation can move safely from experiment to production. In response, a clearer structure is starting to emerge. Core systems are increasingly being treated as the control layer of the institution, keeping records consistent while giving banks the auditability regulators now expect. Around that core, banks can build more flexible layers for customer engagement and decisioning without putting critical records or compliance processes at risk. The separation is deliberate. It allows teams to iterate on products and models without placing critical records or compliance processes at risk. Changes can happen, but within defined boundaries. This approach follows broader shifts toward API-driven, composable architectures, enabling different components to interact without tight coupling. It may sound subtle, but in practice, it changes how a bank operates under growth. Infrastructure Is Becoming a Strategic Question Decisions about infrastructure now also carry weight beyond technology teams. These choices effectively set the ceiling for a bank’s growth. Not only that, it can aid in determining its ability to pivot when the market shifts without compromising on safety. Cloud-native, API-based platforms let banks deploy and scale systems with greater flexibility, driving their growing adoption. They allow institutions to handle fluctuations in demand and introduce updates without extended downtime. Furthermore, access to data is just as important. Older workflows often depend on manual extraction or scheduled transfers, which slows things down and increases the chance of errors. Newer approaches can help provide controlled access to live data environments. It will allow teams to work with current information without compromising stability. Sustainable growth now hinges on basic feasibility rather than minor optimisations. The Next Phase Will Favour Those Who Can Operate Under Pressure All of this is contributing to a broader shift in how core banking is understood, as it is no longer seen merely as a system of record. Most institutions now treat their core as a complete operating model that defines how the bank actually functions while it grows. Using the core as a blueprint ensures that data stays accurate and different systems work together properly as the business expands. Performance still matters, but the focus has shifted toward long-term stability. A new category of platforms is now emerging to help banks scale under heavy regulation without losing control of their daily work. These providers such as Oradian go beyond just replacing old software. They can help create a reliable environment where banks can safely launch new tools like AI without the risk of system failures. The framing now becomes different because the problem has changed. As the global digital banking market is forecast to reach US$87.8 billion by 2034, the institutions that thrive will be those that view unified data and cloud-native architecture as their strategic core. The future of banking is no longer a question of digital presence, but of digital intelligence. And that intelligence is only as strong as the core that powers it. Banks that handle this shift well often move forward with fewer surprises. Those remaining institutions who don’t, may find that the shortcuts they once relied on become harder to ignore as they grow. Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore based on images by 21ST, rawpixel.com and Who is Danny via Freepik. The post Why Digital Banks in Southeast Asia Are Rethinking Core Banking for the AI Era appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Singapore is outperforming traditional economic powerhouses like the US and European nations in AI adoption, underscoring that implementing specific strategies is essential to boost AI usage and implementation, according to the Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) 2026 AI Index report. In H2 2025, AI adoption in Singapore stood at 61%, making the country the biggest adopter of AI in Asia-Pacific and the second-largest in the world after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at 64%. In comparison, European and North American averages reached approximately 27% and 22%, respectively, with most high-income economies clustered between 25% and 45% adoption. This disproportionately high usage in Singapore, relative to its economic output, indicates that while AI adoption correlates with GDP per capita, government initiatives are critical to accelerating uptake AI diffusion by top 30 geographic areas, first vs second half 2025, Source: 2026 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Apr 2026 AI initiatives in Singapore Since at least 2019, Singapore has launched initiatives to boost AI development. In 2019, the government launched the National AI Strategy, presenting the first comprehensive AI plan to transform the economy and position the nation as a global AI hub. In 2023, it released an updated and expanded version of the strategy, outlining three key priorities: repositioning AI as a necessity rather than an opportunity, shifting from a local context to a global outlook, and moving from individual projects to the development of a wide-scale infrastructure and foundation for AI. 2024 was especially prolific with the establishment of the Singapore AI Safety Institute (AISI) with an annual budget of SGD 10 million to cover core research areas on frontier AI models, including red-team evaluation, alignment research, and traceability testing; as well as a SGD 120 million (US$94 million) commitment from the government to the “AI for Science” initiative focusing on the development and adoption of AI methods and tools, while funding collaboration between AI researchers and scientific domain experts in fields of strategic interest, such as advanced materials and biomedical sciences. Building on this momentum, new initiatives were launched in 2026, including an additional investment of over SGD 1 billion over five years under the National AI Research and Development (NAIRD) Plan to strengthen Singapore’s public AI research capabilities focusing on three key areas: fundamental AI research, applied AI research, and talent development. Singapore leads AI job postings High adoption of AI in Singapore is fueling demand for AI talent. Across the countries tracked by Lightcast, demand for AI-related talent continued to increase in 2025, with jobs requiring AI skills making up an increasingly large share of total postings, and Singapore taking the lead. Singapore topped the rankings in 2025, with 4.69% of all job postings requiring AI skills. It was followed by Hong Kong at 3.5%, Luxembourg at 3.4%, and Spain at 3.3%. The US reached 2.6%, followed by Chile at 2.4% and the UK at 1.9%. AI job postings (% of all job postings) by select geographic areas, 2014-2025, Source: 2026 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Apr 2026 This year, AI talent remains scarce and in high demand. According to ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Global Talent Shortage Survey released in February 2026, AI skills have become Singapore’s hardest-to-fill capabilities, even as overall talent scarcity eases. In 2026, 71% of employers in Singapore reported difficulty hiring skilled talent, down from 83% in 2025 and slightly below the global average of 72%. This also represents the lowest level recorded locally since 2021. For the first time, AI model and application development (26%) and AI literacy (25%) topped the list of hardest-to-find skills in Singapore. IT and data, which ranked first in 2025, dropped to seventh at 17% in 2026. The Singapore talent shortage over time, Source: ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Global Talent Shortage Survey, Feb 2026 This shortage persists despite Singapore boasting one of the largest pools of AI talent globally. The HAI research analyzed LinkedIn’s measures on the concentration of AI talent within countries and the movement of that talent across borders. It found that Singapore had the second-highest concentration of AI talent among LinkedIn members at 1.8%, trialing only Israel at 2.1%. Luxembourg followed in third place with 1.6%. AI talent concentration by geographic area, 2025, Source: LinkedIn 2025, via 2026 Artificial Intelligence Index Report, Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), Apr 2026 AI adoption among Singapore enterprises soars Booming adoption of AI in Singapore is being driven by a surge in enterprise usage. According to Singapore’s Infocomm Media and Development Authority (IMDA), AI adoption among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tripled in one year, with 14.5% of SMEs adopting AI in 2024, up from 4.3% in 2023. Among non-SMEs, the AI adoption rate also jumped from 44% to 62.5%. Those who adopt AI reported tangible gains. Specifically, SMEs tapping AI-enabled solutions under the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG), which provides financial support for businesses to adopt pre-scoped IT solutions, equipment and consultancy services to boost efficiency, achieved an average cost savings of 52% in 2024. Returns were even higher for AI-enhanced security measures. SMEs that adopted AI-powered cybersecurity solutions under PSG achieved even higher average cost savings of 71%.   Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by DC Studio via Magnific The post Singapore Surpasses Traditional Economic Powerhouses in AI Adoption appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Advance Intelligence Group has made a fresh US$149 million capital injection into its subsidiary Atome Financial, months after the consumer finance business secured an upsized debt facility. The capital was injected through a share subscription, DealStreetAsia reported, citing regulatory filings with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority. Advance Intelligence subscribed to about 38 million ordinary shares in Atome Financial at US$3.90 per share, according to the filings. Atome Financial operates the group’s consumer finance business, including the buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform Atome. The capital injection follows Atome’s renewed and upsized US$345 million syndicated debt facility announced in January. The facility was larger than Atome’s US$200 million debt package from 2024. Atome Financial reported its first full-year profit in 2024, with operating income rising 63% year-on-year to US$236 million. Gross merchandise volume exceeded US$2 billion, up 50% from 2023. Advance Intelligence Group’s wider business spans consumer finance, digital lending, credit scoring, fraud detection and enterprise AI solutions. Its investors include SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Warburg Pincus, Northstar Group and EDBI. DealStreetAsia reported in October that Advance Intelligence was considering a new equity fundraising of more than US$200 million at a possible valuation of about US$3 billion. In 2021, Advance Intelligence raised more than US$400 million from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Warburg Pincus, valuing the group at more than US$2 billion. It later secured US$80 million in 2023 from a consortium led by Warburg Pincus and Northstar Group.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by wahyu_t via Magnific The post Atome Financial Secures US$149 Million Capital Injection From Advance Intelligence appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

KAST has launched USD stablecoin cashback, allowing users to earn up to 3% cashback on card spending. The feature sits alongside KAST’s existing points-based rewards and comes as stablecoins are being used beyond crypto trading. Cashback rates vary by membership tier. Standard users can earn 1.5% cashback on the first US$2,000 of monthly card spend. Premium members can earn 2% cashback on up to US$10,000 in monthly spend, along with 1% in KAST Points on eligible transactions. Private members can earn 3% cashback on monthly spend of up to US$40,000. They also receive 2% in KAST Points on eligible card transactions and access to a gold card. Rewards are subject to terms and conditions. Premium and Private members also receive a Visa Infinite card, which includes travel accident insurance of up to US$1.5 million, 180-day purchase protection, 30-day price protection and access to more than 1,200 airport lounges worldwide through the Visa Airport Companion app. Raagulan Pathy Raagulan Pathy, Founder and CEO of KAST, said,  “We know users want rewards to feel like real money, not something you have to manage over time. Stablecoin cashback is a step in that direction – what you earn is what you get, and you can use it on your KAST card along with your typical spend. Over time, that’s where rewards are heading.” The launch follows KAST’s US$80 million Series A funding round last month, co-led by QED Investors and Left Lane Capital. KAST also plans to introduce savings products, credit and KAST Business later this year.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by KAST The post KAST Launches Up to 3% Stablecoin Cashback on Card Spend appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Chocolate Finance is wrapping up The Chocolate Games today with more than 7 million HeyMax Miles unlocked by players. More than 8,000 participants have taken part, completing over 88,000 games. The total is equivalent to more than 10 round trips to Tokyo, along with flights to Hong Kong and Bali, and travel and hotel vouchers. For the final 24 hours, Chocolate Finance has doubled referral rewards to 400 miles when a referred friend signs up and plays their first game. Walter de Oude Walter de Oude, Founder of Chocolate Finance, said, “This experience grew bigger than we expected, not just in scale but in how naturally people have made it part of their day. What stood out was not only how many people played, but how often they came back. This behaviour tells us that the experience struck the right balance between being simple enough to jump into, competitive enough to stay interesting, and rewarding enough to keep people coming back. With less than 24 hours left, there’s still plenty to play for.” Referrals have contributed more than 250,000 miles. Chocolate Finance has also introduced Walter’s Challenge for the final stretch, with Walter playing both the Blink Game and Tap Game at the same time and inviting users to beat his high score. The first 50 new users to do so will receive an additional 500 miles each. The campaign will close on 6 May at midnight. The top players will compete in the in-person finals on 10 May for the title of Chocolate Games champion and 250,000 HeyMax Miles.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by freepik via Magnific The post Chocolate Games Crosses 7 Million HeyMax Miles as Campaign Nears Close appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

Coinbase layoffs will cut about 14% of the crypto exchange’s workforce as the company lowers costs in a down market and reorganises around AI. The cuts were announced in a blog post by CEO Brian Armstrong, who linked the move to market volatility and changes in how teams work with AI. Armstrong noted that Coinbase remains well-capitalised, but its business is still exposed to quarter-to-quarter swings. The company is now adjusting its cost base as it navigates a down market. Coinbase also plans to flatten its organisation to a maximum of five layers below the CEO and COO. Leaders will be expected to manage larger teams while remaining active contributors. The company will focus more on smaller AI-native teams, including experiments with one-person teams that combine product, design and engineering responsibilities. Affected employees will lose access to Coinbase systems on the day of the announcement, a step Armstrong described as necessary to protect customer information. US-based employees will receive at least 16 weeks of base pay, plus two weeks for each year of service, their next equity vest and six months of COBRA health coverage. Employees on work visas will receive additional transition support, while staff outside the US will receive support based on local factors and consultation requirements. Coinbase will provide more details on its expense outlook during its Q1 earnings call on Thursday.     Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by tahantanha10 via Magnific The post Coinbase CEO Says Layoffs Will Affect 14% of Workforce Amid AI Shift appeared first on Fintech Singapore.

In today’s AI landscape, most platforms still compete on isolated improvements – faster inference, better benchmarks, incremental gains. Agnes AI is a Singapore-based company that has developed and trained its own multimodal AI models in-house, positioning itself as a locally built player in the global AI ecosystem. Agnes AI is taking a different approach. With its model suite now available on Zenmux through API token access, Agnes AI is expanding developer access to its proprietary models while separately launching Agnes Token Plans through its official website. Together, these moves reflect a broader strategy: making full-stack AI more accessible, predictable, and practical for real-world usage. From Models to Systems The shift Agnes is betting on is simple: developers no longer need better models in isolation – they need systems that work in practice. Most AI workflows today are fragmented. One tool for reasoning, another for generation, another for execution. Integration becomes the real bottleneck. Agnes addresses this by packaging its capabilities into a single environment where reasoning, generation, and action are tightly connected. The result is less about model selection and more about workflow execution. This approach reflects the company’s core principles – AI neutrality, parity, and inclusion – now applied at the infrastructure level. Instead of limiting access through pricing or ecosystem lock-in, the platform is designed to be accessible, cost-efficient, and globally deployable. From API Access to Subscription-Based AI Usage Through Zenmux, developers can access Agnes’s model suite using API token access, enabling integration into external products, workflows, and developer environments. Separately, Agnes has launched Agnes Token Plans through its official website. Starting at US$4 per month, the subscription structure is designed for high-frequency, lightweight workloads, while also supporting more advanced professional use cases. This pricing model reflects a strong focus on cost efficiency, making multimodal AI more accessible without the cost barriers that have historically limited adoption across similar platforms. The key shift is not only economic, but practical: AI becomes something users can integrate into ongoing workflows with more predictable costs. The platform supports high-throughput processing, access across Agnes’s text, image, and video models, OpenAI API compatibility, and scalable usage from everyday productivity to more complex production workflows. The Zenmux Launch and Early Developer Traction The Zenmux launch includes access to Agnes’s agent-based models and multimodal generation capabilities, forming a pipeline across text, image, and video. What stands out is not just the coverage, but the adoption signal. Within the first week, API usage surged beyond several comparable model providers, suggesting that demand is shifting toward integrated systems rather than standalone models. This aligns with a broader market movement: developers are optimising less for theoretical performance and more for how quickly systems can be deployed and used. New Applications Powered by Proprietary Models: Pavo and Echo Beyond infrastructure, Agnes is extending its capabilities into the application layer with two new products: Echo and Pavo, both powered by its proprietary multimodal models. Echo is positioned as an immersive AI character interaction platform, where users can create digital personas and engage in narrative-driven experiences. The system generates synchronised video and voice in real time, enabling interactive storytelling and personalised, cinematic interactions. Pavo focuses on AI-powered image and video creation for creators and businesses. Built on Agnes’s proprietary models, it enables fast generation of cinematic content from simple inputs, supporting workflows such as marketing asset creation, social media production, and rapid prototyping. Together, these applications demonstrate how Agnes’s model ecosystem extends beyond infrastructure into real user-facing experiences. A Shift Already Underway The Zenmux release and the official Token Plans launch reflect a structural shift in AI adoption. As model capabilities converge, differentiation is moving toward usability, integration speed, and cost efficiency. Agnes positions itself directly in this transition. Instead of competing model-by-model, it is building an environment where AI becomes part of a working system – one that developers can deploy, extend, and scale without rebuilding infrastructure around it. At the same time, the company has reached approximately US$20 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), signaling commercial traction as it expands its global developer and application ecosystem. Developed, trained, and deployed in Singapore, Agnes also reflects the growing capability of locally built AI technologies to compete on a global stage.     Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by Agnes The post Agnes AI Opens Zenmux API Access, Launches Token Plans for Developers appeared first on Fintech Singapore.