A 30-page report by the Singapore Fintech Association Synthesis shows strong cashless growth, mounting fraud losses, limited consumer literacy.
According to research by the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA), Singapore’s payment infrastructure has become one of the most digitalized in the region, but the rush towards real-time, cross-border and token-based payments is exposing gaps in trust, literacy and transparency that are harder to quantify.
Through a synthesis of public statistics and industry forecasts, the SFA paints an upbeat picture of adoption and connectivity, but also underscores record scam losses and limited insight into how many of the headline projections are derived.
According to figures cited from government and industry sources, 92% of Singapore residents polled were using a digital payment method in the year up November 2025, supported by near-universal bank account penetration and widespread use of FAST, PayNow and the national SGQR code. Also:
- Card payments, e-money and instant transfers have all grown strongly in value over 2020–2024
- Check usage continued to decline, suggesting that cash and paper-based instruments are steadily being displaced rather than abruptly abandoned
- Scam-related losses in Singapore reached about S$1.1bn in 2024, with mid‑2025 figures highlighting investment scams, government-official impersonation, phishing and crypto-related schemes as major contributors.
- Singapore authorities have reported recovering or preventing hundreds of millions of stolen dollars, but the SFA report relies on secondary disclosures, thereby offering no independent forensic analysis of how comprehensive or comparable those figures have been over time
- Regionally, Singapore is described as moving quickly to embed its domestic rails into a wider ASEAN network. PayNow is already linked with Thailand’s PromptPay and Malaysia’s DuitNow, and multilateral initiatives such as Project Nexus aim to connect fast payment systems across several Asian markets. Yet only 56% of Singapore consumers in surveys were said to be familiar with cross-border digital wallet capabilities, compared with 84% of merchants, suggesting that infrastructure is outpacing public understanding and usage
In the report, stablecoins and digital assets add another layer of complexity. One referenced dataset estimates that Singapore dollar‑pegged stablecoins accounted for more than 70% of South-east Asia’s non‑USD stablecoin transaction volume in Q2 2025, even as the overall segment remains small relative to mainstream payments.
Note that all of the reported trends rest on a compilation of third-party reports and forecasts, as stated in the methodology.
According to the association’s president, Holly Fang, “Moving forward, the SFA will continue working closely with policymakers and industry stakeholders, fostering ongoing dialog between regulators and fintechs to help shape the roadmap for Singapore’s payments infrastructure.”
