The Singapore FinTech Festival (SFF) celebrates its 10th anniversary this year on Nov 12-14. More than a forum for ideas and innovation, each year SFF highlights a theme — from financial inclusion and sustainability to AI, quantum computing and digital assets — driving economic growth regionally and globally. 

From the onset, the visitors and participants to the SFFs have, in themselves, boosted Singapore’s service sector. From just 11,000 attendees in 2016, the festival has grown to more than 60,000 and is a marquee event in the fintech calendar.

SFF is the world’s largest fintech festival. SFF2022 drew 62,000 participants, and SFF2023 broke the record with 66,000.

“Last year, SFF brought together over 65,000 policymakers, technologists, financial services leaders, entrepreneurs and investors from across 130 countries to address issues of the present and identify opportunities of the future,” says Leong Sing Chiong, deputy managing director, markets and development, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). “The first edition of SFF marked a pivotal moment where we shared MAS’ vision of a smart financial centre where innovation is pervasive and technology is used widely.”

The local banks themselves are beneficiaries of digitalisation and fintech. In 1994, Bill Gates is reported to have said banks are dinosaurs and we can bypass them. “Amid the excitement of the first dot.com era and through the global financial crisis and rise of smartphones, thousands of fintechs emerged trying to deliver on Gates’ boast,” notes an Oliver Wyman report 30 years later. 

See also: What happened to blockchain?

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In 2015 and 2016, when the fintech phenomenon became clearly observable in the Singapore context, this was pitched as fintech disruptors vs mainstream incumbents such as the local banks. 

As it turned out, the local banks rose to the occasion, with DBS Group Holdings launching a digital-only bank, digibank, in India and subsequently in Indonesia and elsewhere. DBS continues to use technology to scale in its businesses. Similarly, UOB launched a digital-only bank, UOB TMRW, in Thailand in 2019 and then in Indonesia. It too has used financial technology to scale in Asean, especially in large countries where it has a physical presence, and now adopts a digital-first approach to onboarding new customers. 

With local financial institutions seizing the opportunity to digitalise and innovate, fintechs have not swept banks away. Banks have grown, and some banks have either worked with fintechs or acquired fintechs, as UOB has done with Personetics.

“Rather than let such adversarial narrative take hold, there was an opportunity to push for a more fundamental movement to promote innovation in financial services,” says Leong.

See also: Connecting Asean with Project Nexus

Innovations from the Sandbox

On the innovation front, the SFF created a safe space for regulators and innovators to meet and speak freely and frankly. MAS’s FinTech Regulatory Sandbox was launched at SFF in 2016, so that financial institutions (FIs) and fintechs could launch innovative products or services within controlled boundaries. 

“We saw an opportunity to create a dynamic space where technology, innovation in finance, regulatory policies, and funding discussions could converge, and produce tangible outcomes for individuals, businesses and societies. Gradually, these conversations and aspirations evolved into what became the Singapore FinTech Festival or SFF,” says Leong.

As an example, ADDX (formerly iSTOX) used the MAS sandbox to test its blockchain-based platform for issuing and trading tokenised securities. After exiting the sandbox, ADDX became a fully regulated platform offering fractional access to private market investments like hedge funds, private equity, and real estate. 

Elsewhere, BondEvalue piloted its blockchain-based fractional bond trading platform in the sandbox. It allows retail investors to buy fractions of wholesale bonds, making bond investing more accessible. BondEvalue has since launched BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX), a regulated platform operating under MAS guidelines.

New technologies, such as blockchain technology, were tested for interbank payments and trade finance. Big data analytics for customer insights and fraud detection, machine learning algorithms and application programming interfaces (API) that enable financial institutions to integrate data to support innovative solutions were all experimented on.

PolicyPal, which uses technology for users to plan their insurance needs, was the first to graduate from the MAS sandbox in 2017 and continues to operate as a digital insurance broker. However, this year, the company has reportedly downsized. 

Kristal.Ai tested its robo-advisory platform in the MAS sandbox and is now fully operational in Singapore, Hong Kong and India with over US$1 billion ($1.3 billion) in assets under management, according to media reports. 

Most recently, in 2025, the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), led by MAS and industry partners, was tested in the sandbox for quantum-safe encryption for financial communications.

“SFF has therefore provided a valuable platform for MAS to spot nascent innovations, anticipate emerging technological paradigms. This guided our collaborations with the industry on ways to harness technology that can best generate industry-wide benefits,” Leong says. 

Advancements reshaping daily life

Since SFF 2016, one fintech change we can all relate to is the transformation of local and regional payment infrastructure. Leong points to key developments over three phases. The first phase relates to the payment infrastructure. The launch of PayNow in 2017, followed by PayNow Corporate in 2018, enabled easy use and access to our FAST (fast and secure transfers) rails, transforming how money moved through the economy. Bank codes and account numbers were no longer needed for payments. Mobile numbers, QR codes and company UENs (unique entity number) made it much easier to transfer funds, pay bills and so on. 

PayNow was designed as an interoperable infrastructure that both banks and non-banks could access. PayNow can be used cross-border with Thailand’s PromptPay and Malaysia’s DuitNow. The next phase of cross-border linkages is being developed by Project Nexus to scale payment interoperability regionally and potentially globally. Through Nexus, countries can connect their domestic instant payment systems to a multilateral gateway, enabling seamless cross-border transactions across numerous jurisdictions.

“Having established this infrastructure domestically, we were then able to embark on cross-border payment linkages with Thailand’s PromptPay, India’s UPI and Malaysia’s DuitNow,” says Leong. 

Through Project Nexus, countries can connect their domestic instant payment systems to a multilateral payments gateway, enabling seamless cross-border transactions across numerous jurisdictions, adds Leong.

The second development phase brought about digital convenience through payment apps, where PayNow-linked apps and smartphone contactless payments gained widespread adoption. Smartphones became the centre of the payments experience with payment apps integrating data analytics, promotions and rewards. 

These payment apps enabled convenient access for both consumers and businesses, resulting in a significant consumer shift towards QR code and NFC payments. This shift was accelerated significantly by government initiatives like HawkersGoDigital, which helped digitise payments to hawkers during the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme demonstrated how fintech could bridge generational and technological divides, bringing even the most traditional merchants into the digital economy.

The third and most recent phase looks to the concept of Purpose Bound Money (PBM), which was first tested under Project Orchid. PBM enables money to be directed towards a specific purpose, without programming the money itself. Use cases for PBM include government disbursements, programmable rewards, and eCommerce escrow arrangements.

An example of commercial adoption of the PBM concept is around OCBC partnering with LTA to disburse over $22 million in advance payments to main contractors with enhanced transparency and accountability, demonstrating how PBM transforms large-scale project financing by ensuring funds reach intended recipients for designated uses. Separately, a collaboration between StraitsX, Ant International, and Grab is enabling overseas customers to pay local merchants seamlessly in their local currency and apps, leveraging PBM as a mechanism to facilitate secure payments whilst maintaining compliance safeguards.

“Real-time payments have provided greater financial flexibility to corporates, businesses and individuals. Small business owners can pay suppliers immediately, strengthening cash flow management. Seamless cross-border payments can significantly ease the burden of migrant workers in sending funds home to their families, which has greatly promoted financial inclusion in the region,” says Leong.

In digital banking, faster digital credit assessments and loan approvals are possible. For the influencer community and in large geographies such as Asean, digital banking can help those without traditional employment build credit histories and manage finances more effectively. 

AI’s promise and pitfalls 

Diana Coyle, Professor of Public Policy at Cambridge, recently noted in Project Syndicate that AI could give the global economy a productivity boost akin to the 1990s digital revolution. It is expected to double productivity growth, potentially raising GDP worldwide.

“The dot-com boom offers some useful lessons. In the second half of the 1990s, emerging digital technologies nearly doubled US productivity growth to 2.5%. Although economists’ forecasts vary, some studies suggest that today’s wave of AI investment could produce a similarly significant boost in GDP growth,” adds Coyle. 

Generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI have attracted billions of dollars in investments in the past couple of years, including in AI infrastructure such as data centres, power supply and water availability. 

In 2025 alone, venture capitalists poured over US$200 billion into AI start-ups, fueling innovation across sectors, Coyle points out in her report. The Stargate project in the US is reported to have attracted US$500 billion in investments. AI and tech companies accounted for three-quarters of the S&P 500’s gains this year, reflecting investor confidence in AI’s economic potential, Coyle adds. 

SFF 2023 delved into the AI’s promise as well as its pitfalls. Today, AI is rapidly transforming the global financial landscape, especially with the advent of GenAI. Financial institutions are at the forefront of this transformation, with recent surveys showing an average 20% productivity improvement in areas such as software development, customer service, and operational efficiency.

AI also provides financial institutions with an important opportunity to redesign their internal and external processes towards a globally competitive business model that can bring greater product offerings, improved customer service and enhanced value creation. New offerings include GenAI-powered client engagements, investment portfolio AI assistants, automated insurance underwriting flows and agentic payments. 

“Our financial ecosystem is well placed to be a centre for responsible AI adoption in financial services. We have a good and growing concentration of leading AI-in-Finance expertise in both financial institutions and fintechs in Singapore,” Leong says. 

MAS recently launched PathFin.ai to drive industry-wide AI adoption. It helps financial institutions use AI effectively in business-ready applications, tailored to their size and needs.

“Through PathFin.ai, we are seeing both large and small FIs cross-share their approaches towards effective AI adoption — whether in front, middle or back-office functions. More importantly, we are also seeing some financial institutions rethink how financial service functions and tasks are performed,” adds Leong.

With agentic AI workflows, what may have taken a week or more to be done can potentially be done in a day or less. With the use of AI voice agents, customers are now able to have more customised and timely support services — from the latest updates on new products, to faster onboarding and transactions, and personalised support of investment portfolios.

In 2023, MAS, in collaboration with financial institutions, launched Project Mindforge to understand the opportunities and risks of GenAI. The framework guided financial institutions to use GenAI responsibly. A platform-agnostic GenAI reference architecture was also developed, providing a list of the building blocks and components that financial institutions could use to create enterprise-level GenAI technology capabilities. 

“This will guide financial institutions in establishing robust oversight, risk management, and lifecycle controls for AI systems — including practical resources to manage cyber risks associated with GenAI. As AI adoption grows, addressing its opportunities and risks is vital to building trust and enabling financial institutions to confidently scale its use,” Leong notes. 

Focusing on quantum computing 

Quantum computing was one of the themes in SFF 2024, the other being the AI continuum. Quantum technology leverages the principles of quantum mechanics to enable faster and more complex computations that cannot be achieved with classical computers. The impact and potential of such technology will be felt across industries, from defence to healthcare to financial services. Firms can already use quantum computing subscription services through cloud service providers and open-source quantum software development kits for technical experimentation.

According to McKinsey, quantum computing use cases in financial services could create over US$600 billion in value by 2035. 

According to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), it is still unclear whether quantum computing technology, when adopted on a large scale, constitutes a potential cyber threat to the financial system. Malicious actors can intercept and store confidential, classically encrypted data with the intention of decrypting it later when quantum computers become powerful enough to do so. This means that data stored or transmitted today is exposed to “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks by a future quantum computer.

To prepare central banks and the global financial system for a transition towards quantum-resistant encryption, the BIS Innovation Hub Eurosystem’s Project Leap is investigating how to update and replace the cryptographic security algorithms that the financial system is critically reliant on.

In 2024, MAS issued an advisory to financial institutions in Singapore, which highlights some measures that financial institutions should consider as part of their quantum transition efforts, such as maintaining an inventory of cryptographic assets, building technical competencies for quantum security solutions, and conducting proof-of-concept trials on such solutions to prepare for implementation.

MAS has conducted post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and QKD trials to study the viability of quantum-safe solutions for adoption in financial services.

“The financial sector must start taking steps to build resilience against future threats. The cyber risks arising from quantum computing are one such area. While quantum computing is currently not yet at a mature stage, the technology is developing rapidly, and sensitive customer data and financial transactions could be at risk of quantum-powered decryption by threat actors in the near to medium term,” Leong says.

In November 2024. MAS and Banque de France announced the successful completion of an experiment using PQC to secure international email communications.

In July 2025, at MAS’ Annual Report media conference, MAS announced the successful completion of a QKD sandbox, conducted in collaboration with several banks (DBS, HSBC, OCBC and UOB) and technology partners (SPTel and SpecQtral). This sandbox trialled the use of QKD for the secure transfer of financial data amongst MAS and the participating banks. MAS and industry partners published a technical report detailing the results and takeaways from the sandbox in September 2025. 

“MAS will continue to engage FIs to prepare for a quantum-safe transition, as a full transition is complex and will take time. Our supervisory teams have begun reviewing how FIs manage their cryptographic inventory and will be reviewing how FIs identify critical assets to be prioritised for quantum-safe migration,” says Leong.

A driver for good 

In 2017, the Asean Bankers Association (ABA) and MAS, in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), established the Asean Financial Innovation Network (AFIN) to promote financial inclusion and innovation across the Asean region. In 2018, AFIN launched API Exchange (APIX), the world’s first cross-border, open-architecture platform. APIX connects FIs and fintechs, provides a sandbox environment for collaborative experimentation, and supports API-based innovation to drive scalable digital solutions.

In SFF 2018, during Singapore’s Asean Chairmanship, the theme was financial inclusion to benefit the population of Asean. APIX has formed partnerships with fintech associations in Asia, such as the FinTech Association of Japan, and elsewhere, including the FinTech Association for Consumer Empowerment. 

“We took the opportunity to explore how fintech could better address Asean’s needs — banking the unbanked, financing SMEs, and leapfrogging legacy infrastructure with modern solutions,” says Leong. 

For the festival to remain relevant, it must continue to inspire every segment, from policymakers, fintech entrepreneurs, innovators, to end users, and even to the youth who will continue the innovation cycle in the years to come.

“Today’s youth will inherit our breakthroughs as their baseline. With today’s technology as their foundation, they will develop new and exciting solutions we can’t yet fully envision. The festival can help nurture this emerging talent, foster curiosity and encourage the next wave of innovation.”

“At its core, fintech must be a driver for good. As highlighted in our 2023 Singapore FinTech Festival speech, ‘Everything we do in fintech must have a larger purpose’ and ‘Fintech is about improving people’s lives’,” adds Leong.  

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