Singapore's first crypto licensee ups R&D, focus on existing solutions

Singapore

DESPITE obtaining the first of Singapore's much-coveted licences to offer digital payment token (DPT) services, mobile payments platform FOMO Pay will focus on its existing, non-tokenised solutions while ramping up research and development efforts on DPT and blockchain technology.

Founded in 2015, FOMO Pay is a mobile payment aggregator that helps online and offline merchants connect to different mobile wallets and credit cards through a single, unified QR (Quick Response) code. Earlier this year, it also started offering buy-now-pay-later schemes. FOMO Pay currently works with more than 6,000 merchants across various sectors in Singapore, and has been expanding into Malaysia and Hong Kong.

"Digital payment tokens will become a new form of digital payment. It may not be mainstream right now, but probably in the near future, we will see merchants accepting bitcoin or ether," the firm's founder and chief executive Louis Liu told The Business Times. "FOMO Pay is working to launch the payment solution for DPTs soon," he said, without specifying a timeline.

Singapore regulations define DPTs as any cryptographically-secured digital representation of value intended to be used as a medium of exchange, and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically. Examples include cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies and utility tokens.

Mr Liu said his company is also keeping close watch on various jurisdictions' plans to roll out central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

"Once CBDCs are rolled out, we will need to find a lot of use cases to distribute CBDCs in real life. So FOMO Pay has been doing a lot of R&D in preparation for that," he said. "This really depends on when the governments in this region are preparing to roll out these plans, but we are preparing for the future."

FOMO Pay envisions offering a payment gateway, compliance checks and onchain analysis via a "one-stop shop" for merchants transacting in DPTs, Mr Liu said.

As at press time, FOMO Pay remains the only one out of 170 applicants that the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has licensed to provide DPT payment services.

Most others have been operating with an exemption from holding a licence, under transitional arrangements in the Payment Services Act. The exemption is in force until applications are approved or rejected by MAS, or withdrawn by the applicant.

Australian crypto exchange Independent Reserve and DBS Vickers, the brokerage arm of Singapore's DBS bank, have been notified of MAS' "in-principle approvals" of their applications.

Together with the DPT licence, FOMO Pay was also granted new licences to operate merchant acquisition services and domestic money transfer services on Sept 1.

"The licences recognise our compliance framework, policies, procedures and risk management systems and allow us to be connected to other industry partners to continue innovating and prepare for the future of digital payments around the world," Mr Liu said. He declined to reveal details about the company's financials, stressing only that it has been profitable since 2020. The total volume of transactions processed increased by 330 per cent from 2019 to 2020, he added.