Singapore’s digital payments set to hit US$113.7 billion by 2030, cementing regional lead

Gen Z and millennial consumers are driving the shift towards cashless transactions in the city-state

Digital payments in Singapore are projected to grow to US$113.7 billion by 2030, up from a transaction value of US$39.4 billion in 2023, according to a report on the city-state’s payments ecosystem.

This comes as Singapore leads the region in both digital payments adoption and funding, with Gen Z and millennial consumers driving the shift towards cashless transactions, the Payments’ State of Play 2026 report released on Wednesday (Feb 4) by the Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) and PwC found.

Investment into Singapore’s payments sector also topped the region, with more than US$319 million raised in the first nine months of 2025. This exceeded the combined funding secured by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam over the same period.

Singdollar-pegged stablecoins “dominated” transaction volumes in South-east Asia, with a market share of over 70 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.

Payments form a subset of the broader fintech sector.

Expanding sector

The report noted that Singapore is the world’s third-largest foreign exchange trading centre. Average daily trading volumes rose to US$1.49 trillion in April 2025, a 60 per cent increase from April 2022.

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SFA president Holly Fang said the expansion of the payments sector reflects the city-state’s development of “one of the most advanced, resilient and trusted payments ecosystems in the world”.

Domestically, payment systems such as Fast And Secure Transfers processed more than 500 million transactions in 2024, representing a 31 per cent year-on-year increase. About 98 per cent of Singaporean adults now use digital wallets.

Total card payments and e-money value grew at compound annual growth rates of 12.9 per cent and 7.3 per cent, respectively, between 2020 and 2024, even as overall transaction volumes dipped 2.6 per cent over the same period.

The sector’s growth is also underpinned by regional cross-border connectivity. Initiatives such as Project Nexus and bilateral PayNow linkages with Thailand and Malaysia have boosted cross-border flows, with remittance volumes reaching US$8.1 billion in 2022 and projected to rise to US$13.3 billion by 2032.

More to come

Further growth is expected to be driven by enhancements to existing payments infrastructure, including greater use of artificial intelligence to strengthen fraud detection and mitigate scam risks, which led to losses of about S$840 million in the first 11 months of 2025.

Other growth drivers include deeper cross-border interoperability, the embedding of financial services into super apps, and the expansion of tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins.

PwC Singapore partner Wong Wanyi said: “Singapore stands at the centre of this transformative era, where long-term success as a payments hub – and for industry players – calls for a comprehensive framework of controls and risk management.”

She added that this is underpinned by “clear regulatory guidance and high industry standards that encourage innovation, build trust and sustain momentum across the ecosystem”.

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