MAS digital banks.
Singapore's licence taxonomy, in plain English.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is the country's integrated central bank and financial regulator. It supervises banking under the Banking Act and supervises non-bank payment services under the Payment Services Act 2019. The digital-bank framework was launched in 2020; the first DFB licences were awarded on 4 January 2022. Today, four distinct MAS licence classes determine how a Singapore digital banking proposition is regulated: Digital Full Bank (DFB), Digital Wholesale Bank (DWB), Stored Value Facility (SVF), and Major Payment Institution (MPI). The licence sets deposit protection, eligible client base, and operational scope. It is not interchangeable terminology.

A Digital Full Bank is a full banking licence under the Singapore Banking Act, with the single restriction that the bank operates digital-only (no physical branches). DFBs are members of the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation (SDIC), so retail customer deposits are insured up to SGD 100,000 per depositor per institution — the same protection a traditional Singapore bank offers.

MAS awarded two retail DFB licences on 4 January 2022:

• GXS Bank — a joint venture between Grab Holdings and Singtel.
• MariBank — operated by Sea Group, the parent of Shopee.

A third digital-banking proposition, Trust Bank (Standard Chartered + FairPrice Group), is sometimes described in the same breath as GXS and MariBank. Trust is structurally different: it is a digital initiative operating under Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) Limited's existing full-bank licence, not a standalone DFB licence. From a depositor's perspective the SDIC-insurance outcome is the same — SGD 100,000 per depositor — because Standard Chartered is itself an SDIC member.

Important caveat on balance caps. MAS placed restricted balance limits on newly awarded DFBs during their initial operating phase (deposit caps per individual customer and aggregate deposit caps). These caps were designed to lift in stages as the licensee matured into fully functioning DFB status, with the formal cap removal occurring across 2024–2025. The exact current cap (and which licensees are now at fully matured DFB status versus still subject to a residual restriction) should be verified directly against the latest MAS publication before relying on it for a deposit decision.

A Digital Wholesale Bank is a digital-only banking licence restricted to serving non-retail clients — small and medium enterprises, larger corporates, and other institutions. DWBs do not take deposits from individual retail consumers. SDIC protection mechanically applies where SDIC-insured deposits are held, but the depositor base is wholesale by design.

MAS awarded two DWB licences in 2022:

• Green Link Digital Bank (GLDB) — backed by Greenland Financial Holdings, Linklogis, and Beijing Co-operative Equity Investment Fund Management.
• ANEXT Bank — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ant Group, focused on cross-border SME financial services.

For consumer-facing comparison, DWBs are off-scope. If you are a Singapore-resident individual choosing a digital current account, DWB licensees do not apply.

A Stored Value Facility licence sits under the Payment Services Act, not the Banking Act. Conceptually it is the Singapore analogue to an EU e-money institution under EMD2: the customer's balance is e-money the issuer has agreed to redeem, not a deposit on the issuer's balance sheet. SVF balances are not SDIC-insured.

Instead, MAS requires the SVF to safeguard customer funds — typically by holding the equivalent value in a segregated trust account at a custodian bank. Citibank Singapore is the dominant custodian for the major Singapore e-money issuers. In a theoretical SVF insolvency, safeguarded funds are returned to customers from the trust account ahead of the SVF's general creditors. That mechanic protects the principal under most scenarios but is bankruptcy-recovery, not state-backed insurance.

The practical lens: an SVF balance is fine for a transactional float — a few weeks of spending, a travel kitty, a multi-currency buffer — but should not be treated as a long-term deposit-substitute. If you want SDIC-grade protection, the funds need to sit in a DFB or traditional-bank account.

A Major Payment Institution licence is the broader Payment Services Act licence. Where an SVF is narrowly an e-money issuer, an MPI is licensed across multiple regulated payment services in any combination above the MAS volume thresholds: e-money issuance, cross-border money-transfer, domestic money-transfer, merchant acquiring, and digital payment-token services. Most consumer-facing multi-currency wallets and money-transfer fintechs in Singapore hold an MPI licence.

This is where Revolut Singapore Pte Ltd sits. Revolut SG operates as an MPI/SVF under MAS, not as a DFB. So do Wise Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd and YouTrip. Customer balances at all three are safeguarded at a custodian bank — they are not SDIC-insured deposits. The MAS public register is the source of record for which licence each entity holds; this status can change, so verify against MAS before relying on it for a high-value decision.

The MPI/SVF distinction matters less to the depositor than the licence-class boundary between PSA-licensed entities (no SDIC) and Banking-Act-licensed entities (SDIC). Treat MPI and SVF as the same protection tier.

The licence framework collapses into two practical questions for a Singapore-resident consumer.

Do you need SDIC-insured deposits? If you are parking a salary, accumulating an emergency fund, or holding more than a few weeks of float, you want SDIC protection. That means a DFB (GXS, MariBank) or a digital initiative under a traditional full bank's licence (Trust Bank, on Standard Chartered SG's licence). Anything PSA-licensed — Revolut SG, Wise SG, YouTrip — is the wrong tool for that job, regardless of how good the app is.

Do you need multi-currency, cross-border, or travel use cases? An MPI or SVF is fine here. Revolut SG, Wise SG, and YouTrip are well-built consumer products with competitive FX and clear safeguarding. The mental model is: this is a transactional wallet, not a deposit account, and the funds you hold there are protected via custodian safeguarding rather than SDIC insurance. Hold the operational float there; sweep long-term balances to an SDIC-insured account.

Most Singapore-resident neobank users end up with both: a DFB or traditional-bank account for SDIC-insured savings, and an MPI multi-currency wallet for travel and cross-border spend. Understanding that you are using two different licence classes is the point of this guide.

MAS's digital-bank framework is among the most coherent globally. The licence taxonomy is explicit, the deposit-protection boundary between Banking-Act and PSA licensees is clearly drawn, and the public licence register removes ambiguity about who holds what. Compared with markets where "neobank" is a marketing word stretched over four or five different regulatory realities, Singapore offers genuine clarity — once you know to ask the licence question.

The one operator-review-flagged area is the DFB balance-cap regime. The caps were always designed as a transitional ramp-up tool, not a permanent feature, and the lift schedule played out across 2024–2025. Public reporting and MAS announcements should be checked directly before quoting a current cap or asserting that a particular DFB has reached fully matured status.

For the full Singapore neobank index, see Singapore's neobank guide. For Revolut Singapore specifically, including the licence trail and fee structure, see the Revolut Singapore review. For the broader Asia-Pacific picture, see our APAC neobank guide.