Depending on whether you count Grab (and that can be a contentious argument), Singapore has yet to produce a homegrown unicorn operating in fintech: but all signs point to one emerging in the future.
Singapore only has Hong Kong as its big competitor for the title of the Asian fintech hub, with a maturing fintech ecosystem, entry of various international players to partner with or draw inspiration from, a mass market that is at least somewhat educated on various fintech offerings, and proximity to many Southeast Asian markets in sore need of fintech revolutions.
In this article, we put together a collection of fintech companies based in Singapore with their core business set in fintech: so despite the valuations to show for it, we won’t be including players like Grab or Razer who diversified into the field post-funding rounds.
We base the numbers listed on values as disclosed by websites like Crunchbase, so actual valuations may vary.
Top Funded Fintech Companies in Singapore
1. TenX – Total funding: US$ 159.1 M
Industry: Cryptocurrency, Payments
TenX is a company specializing in cryptocurrency payments. It provides cards and wallets to enable the spending of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin in real situations even if the teller only accepts fiat currency via Visa. Just launched in January 2019 to the Singaporean market, the TenX Pay cards caused a surge in the token’s prices.
2. Quoine – Total funding: US$123M
Industry: Cryptocurrency, Trading
Quione is a cryptocurrency trading startup with offices in Singapore, Japan and Vietnam. The web-based Bitcoin trading platform allows its users to trade virtual currencies for fiat currencies. It also facilitates fiat currency deposits at local banks spanning many international and Asian currencies such as USD, EUR, JPY, SGD, AUD, etc. The goal is to enable customers with an additional income source via margin trading to earn daily interest.
3. KyberNetwork – Total funding: US$106M
Industry: Crypto-assets, Payments
KyberNetwork is a system that allows the exchange and conversion of digital assets. They offer payment APIs and a contract wallet that also allow users to seamlessly receive payments from any tokens. KyberNetwork also enables derivative trading.
4. M-Daq – Total funding: US$98.7M
Industry: Investment, FX
M-DAQ is a solution that allows investors to trade any exchange-traded products in various currencies, by blending ‘executable’ FX rates into equities and futures products. The solution offers monitoring of multiple denominated currencies in a single exchange order book. They support more than 10 exchanges, and allow a view of portfolio summary with real-time calculation of P&L.
5. Singapore Life, Singapore – Total funding:US$83 million
Industry: Insurtech
Singapore Life is a fully digital insurer, providing technology and transparency in insurance and wealth management. Singapore Life was founded to fill in the digital gaps through innovative technology. Following an acquisition of Zurich Life, Singapore’s business portfolio, Singapore Life has achieved SG$6.6 billion in life insurance coverage to date.
6. InstaRem, Singapore – Total Funding: US$59 million
Industry: Remittance
InstaRem, as the name implies, is a fintech startup offering cross-border money transfers with close to live exchange rates. The company is licensed in the EU, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India & Singapore. The company also offers a configurable, multi-featured platform MassPay that helps corporate and SME users to manage and control their high-volume remittances to multiple beneficiaries in multiple currencies via a seamless process
7. Republic Protocol, Singapore – US$34 million
Industry: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain
Republic Protocol is an open-source decentralized dark pool exchange. It facilitates cross-chain atomic trades on a hidden order book over the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks. This system creates a trustless trading system for large block orders enabling ERC20, Ethereum and Bitcoin pairs to be executed with minimal price slippage and provides protection from front-running.
8. Funding Societies – Total funding: US$32.6M
Industry: Crowdfunding
Funding Societies has a presence across various Southeast Asian markets, but Modalku is probably the company’s most successful venture at this time. Modalku, aims to help SME owners start or grow their business by providing a platform that could connect them to investors—via a crowdfunding, or P2P model. The goal is to solve the financial inclusion issue by making credit-worthy SMEs bankable.
9. Bluzelle, Singapore – Total funding: US$22.3 M
Industry: Blockchain, Data services
Bluzelle offers a fully integrated stack of blockchain applications, middleware and data services geared towards the financial sector. With customers that range from SMEs to global enterprises, Bluzelle designs, develop and deploys solutions catered towards businesses. Part of its funding was raised via a US$19.5 million-worth ICO to build a decentralized database for dApp developers.
10. SmartKarma – Total funding: US$21 M
Industry: Investments
SmartKarma is a fintech company servicing the global asset management industry. It owns and operates a digital marketplace that provides differentiated investment insight into Asian markets. The intelligence is derived from reputable analysts, academics, data scientists and industry experts, compiled into a collaborative marketplace.
Other resources you might be interested in
Check out our resource page to find out what are the top funded fintechs in countries like — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Japan
