Fintechs to get access to Singapore's real-time payment system

Singapore Government has announced opening up its real-time payment system, known as FAST, for fintechs to broaden access to payments players.

Singapore will form a Direct FAST industry working group, which would include banks, non-banks, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), to develop business and technical requirements for non-banks to connect directly to FAST. Grab, Liquid Group, MatchMove, Razer and TransferWise have signed up for this working group.

Government officials have stated that they will look over parties interested in building and operating a FAST aggregator, which would help lower costs by bringing together the technical requirements across a number of players. Open access to a common infrastructure like FAST means that banks and non-banks have to innovate and offer value-added services constantly to stay ahead of the curve. Financial institutions, including banks and payment providers, have also been advised to put in place robust cyber defences so that customers have confidence in carrying out online financial transactions.