Payment service providers: Money-changing

According to MAS (Pages)
last revised on 25 January 2020

The individual applicant, partners or directors of a company applying should have a minimum of 1 year's relevant working or business experience on a full-time basis.

They will also need to meet the following governance requirements:

• For sole proprietors, the applicant must be a Singapore citizen.
• [For a Partnership or LLP,] the majority of its partners should be Singapore citizens. If there are only two partners, only one needs to be a Singapore citizen. More than 50% of the equity shareholdings should be beneficially owned and effectively controlled by Singapore citizens.
• [For a Singapore-owned company, m]ore than 50% of the equity shareholdings should be beneficially owned and effectively controlled by Singapore citizens. A majority of the board of directors of the company should be Singapore citizens. If there are only two directors, only one of the directors needs to be a Singapore citizen.
• For a Singapore incorporated wholly-owned subsidiary of a foreign bank, or a foreign company primarily engaged in money-changing, the parent company needs to:
  • Be of significant size. In case of a foreign bank, it needs to ranks among the top banks in the country where it is incorporated.
  • Possess a good track record and reputation.
  • Be adequately regulated and supervised by its home supervisory authority for AML/CFT.

(Edits by FinReg)