KPay secures Major Payment Institution licence in Singapore

By Divya Shah

Why it matters: KPay’s MPI licence highlights the importance of regulatory approval for scaling payment businesses in the Asia-Pacific. For FinTechs, the move demonstrates how licensing can unlock new revenue streams across acquiring, payments and money transfers while enabling providers to build integrated merchant ecosystems combining payments, commerce and business management tools.

KPay has received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), strengthening its position in the city-state’s payments market and enabling it to expand its merchant services offering. 

The licence, granted to KPay Merchant Services (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. under Singapore’s Payment Services Act 2019, authorises the company to provide merchant acquisition, domestic money transfer and cross-border money transfer services. 

The approval follows the in-principle authorisation granted by MAS in July 2026, subject to KPay meeting a series of regulatory and operational requirements. 

Founded in Singapore in 2022, KPay has grown to serve more than 10,000 merchants, primarily across the food and beverage and retail sectors. The company said it has made significant investments in governance, compliance, risk management, technology and operational capabilities to support a regulated payments business. 

With the MPI licence in place, KPay will provide acquiring and money transfer services directly while expanding its product suite for merchants. 

As part of this expansion, the company is introducing online payments, enabling merchants to support e-commerce transactions, digital invoicing and remote payment collection. KPay is also launching KPay POS, an integrated point-of-sale platform tailored for Singapore’s F&B sector, combining payment acceptance, inventory management and real-time business insights in a single system. 

The new offerings are designed to help businesses manage payments and operations across both physical and digital channels while broadening KPay’s reach into new merchant segments. 

Keith Chen, General Manager of Singapore at KPay Group, said, “A restaurant owner should be able to accept an online order as effortlessly as a walk-in and focus on what matters most: delivering a great dining experience. A retailer should have their payments and business data all in one place.” 

KPay’s existing merchant platform includes a unified dashboard, real-time transaction analytics and consolidated business reporting, supported by dedicated account managers, on-site deployment services and 24/7 customer support. 

Singapore remains one of KPay Group’s two headquarters and will play a central role in its regional growth plans. The company said it intends to use the operational and regulatory standards developed in Singapore as a blueprint for expansion across Asia-Pacific, adapting them to local regulatory requirements. 

Davis Chan, Chief Executive Officer of KPay Group, said, “Our ambition is to build a connected ecosystem that supports merchants in how they accept payments and run their businesses, whether online or in-store. Singapore will remain a key market for that development and an important hub for the capabilities that support KPay’s continued growth across Asia-Pacific.” 

KPay added that it plans to continue investing in its Singapore team and service capabilities as the business scales.