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SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will commit S$220 million (US$173 million) to accelerate innovation in the fintech sector, said Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong on Monday (Aug 31).<\/p>\n
To be spread over three years, the investment is part of a renewed fourth iteration of the Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) scheme aimed at strengthening Singapore’s position as a vibrant and competitive fintech hub.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To this end, the scheme aims to develop technology infrastructure to position the financial sector to adopt new technology solutions and support talent development and attraction for the industry, MAS said in a press release.<\/p>\n
MAS said the scheme will help build a “pipeline of young talent for Singapore’s fintech ecosystem” by co-funding internship stipends, aiming to support at least 1,000 fintech internship opportunities over the next three years. Singaporeans can qualify for this scheme.<\/p>\n
MAS also seeks to anchor and scale innovation activities in Singapore and accelerate financial technologies, with a focus on frontier technologies, the central bank added.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaken together, these efforts will help our financial institutions, fintech firms, and workers innovate, scale, and build the capabilities to seize the emerging opportunities,\u201d said Mr Gan, who is also the Minister for Trade and Industry and the MAS chairman.<\/p>\n
He added that the government has been consulting the financial industry and fintech companies to get feedback to identify gaps and needs, and will continue to engage the industry to refine and improve the scheme.<\/p>\n
The first version of the scheme was started in 2015 by MAS. Since then, more than 350 fintech projects have been supported under the programme.<\/p>\n
Mr Gan said the scheme has helped to build a \u201cvery strong ecosystem\u201d for fintech and the financial industries.<\/p>\n
He noted that Singapore has more than 1,800 fintech companies, many of which have already ventured into the region as well as served the world market.<\/p>\n
The industry also employs some 10,000 people, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd last year, in 2025, we have already seen a total investment of close to S$3 billion in fintech alone. So I think the momentum will continue, and we hope that FSTI 4.0 will continue to provide that boost to the fintech industry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The latest iteration of the scheme, FSTI 4.0, will be implemented through six tracks spanning institutional innovation, AI adoption, infrastructure and platforms and talent development, MAS said.<\/p>\n
Apart from co-funding internship stipends over the next three years, MAS announced a new FinTech Internship Portal, fintechinternships.sg, which is managed by the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA).<\/p>\n
The portal will connect fintech firms with students from Institutes of Higher Learning for internships across business, technology and other roles.<\/p>\n
Each internship, which can be either full-time or part-time, must be at least three months in duration and have defined learning outcomes, MAS said.<\/p>\n
For each qualifying hire, MAS will support 80 per cent of the monthly internship stipend, capped at S$1,000 per month of internship completed, for up to 12 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each participating firm may be funded for up to 10 interns per calendar year, according to MAS’ website.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Gan said building a pipeline of talent is \u201cparticularly critical\u201d in the fintech industry because it is emerging.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot only is it a new industry, it is also evolving very rapidly with the emergence of AI and frontier technologies,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You can imagine that the talent that we need, the capability we need to build, is going to be very critical for the growth of this sector, and that’s why we want to invest in building our people, in giving them the skills and knowledge so that they are able, well-positioned to seize the opportunities where they emerge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The fintech sector has been facing a talent crunch and high attrition rates. \u00a0<\/p>\n
SFA’s 2025 talent report said the industry is facing \u201csignificant shortages\u201d of talent in AI, data science, cybersecurity and cloud architecture. Some issues surfaced by firms include a protracted time to hire, high compensation expectations, as well as high turnover due to insufficient career development or compensation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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SINGAPORE: The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will commit S$220 million (US$173 million) to accelerate innovation in the fintech sector, said Deputy Prime Minister Gan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":81049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--BEfMGMWo--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/08\/31\/_wal5688.jpg?itok=cddVC-GP","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[25362,4453,4850,43,5416,4388,3941,787,29217,903,4389],"class_list":["post-81048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-accelerate","tag-commits","tag-fintech","tag-gan","tag-innovation","tag-kim","tag-mas","tag-million","tag-s220","tag-sector","tag-yong","wpcat-2-id"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}