Global fintech platform Airwallex has been granted regulatory approval in Singapore to offer a wide range of digital payments services which it will roll out in the city-state next year.
The fast-growing fintech said that its local entity Airwallex (Singapore) Pte Ltd has been granted a Major Payment Institution License by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) under the Payment Services Act.
With its new license, Airwallex Singapore will offer payment services such as domestic money transfers, cross-border money transfers, merchant acquisition and e-money issuance.
Chief executive and co-founder of Airwallex Jack Zhang said the Singapore regulatory approval gave the company the ability to scale up payment offerings and solutions for customers.
“We will continue to work closely with regulators and partners to ensure we facilitate a safe, effective and transparent way to manage their cross-border financial transaction needs,” Zhang said in a statement.
“We look forward to launching our services in Singapore next year and enabling businesses in Singapore to operate globally without borders.”
Airwallex will progressively introduce a suite of product and service offerings in Singapore to bolster its presence in the competitive digital payments market and support the growth of local companies across the ASEAN region.
Those offerings include a multi-currency wallet, company and employee cards, spend management, online payments, international collection and transfer, and other value-added solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. There will also be an application programming interface (API) tool available for larger companies that need embedded payments and financial services.
In APAC, the global payments platform has already launched virtual employee cards in Hong Kong and entered Southeast Asia in September after securing a money service business (MSB) license in Malaysia.
Airwallex announced in November that it had raised US$100 million in its latest Series E1 financing round led by Lone Pine Capital. That adds to other oversubscribed funding rounds this year and increases the global fintech’s valuation to US$5.5 billion.
Founded in Australia in 2015 and now Hong-Kong based, Airwallex has more than 1,000 employees across 19 locations globally.