Guide · Singapore
How to check a payment provider is actually licensed
Singapore’s regulator publishes a searchable register of every licensed payment institution, and it is free. Two minutes in it tells you whether the company in front of you holds a licence and what that licence covers. The harder question is the second one — whether the company you are signing with is the licence holder, or somebody reselling access to one — and that is the one worth your attention.
In short
- The register is the MAS Financial Institutions Directory. Free, public, searchable by company name.
- Read two fields: which licence tier, and whether Merchant Acquisition is in the licensed scope.
- Licensed scope is a permission, not a product list. It says what a company may do, not what it does.
- A licence is not a service guarantee and not deposit insurance. It is a floor, not a recommendation.
- The second check: whose name is on the merchant agreement, and who actually settles your money.
The register, and the two fields worth reading
Singapore's regulator publishes the MAS Financial Institutions Directory. It is the authoritative record of who is licensed to do what, it is free, and it is searchable by company name. Nothing a salesperson tells you outranks it.
Search the legal entity name rather than the brand. Payment companies routinely trade under a name that is not their registered one, and a brand that does not appear in the register has not necessarily failed the check — it may simply not be the string the register knows.
Then read two fields and ignore the rest.
| Field | What you are looking for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Licence tier | Standard Payment Institution or Major Payment Institution | The two tiers under the Payment Services Act 2019 are distinguished by transaction thresholds and by the obligations attached to them. |
| Licensed activities | Merchant Acquisition | This is the activity of accepting card and wallet payments on a merchant’s behalf. A company licensed for money transfer or e-money issuance is licensed — for something else. |
| Entity name | The exact legal name you will sign with | The register describes an entity, not a brand. Match them before you rely on the result. |
Licensed scope is a permission, not a catalogue
A company’s licensed activities describe what it is allowed to do, not what it sells. An institution licensed for cross-border money transfer may not offer it to merchants at all. Read the scope as the outer boundary of what could be true, then ask what is actually on offer — the register cannot answer the second question and does not claim to.
What a licence protects, and what it does not
A licence means the company has been assessed against the Payment Services Act’s requirements and carries continuing obligations under it — anti-money-laundering controls, reporting, and, for the relevant regulated activities, requirements around how customer money is handled.
It is not a rating and it is not a recommendation. It says nothing about how fast the terminal is replaced when it dies on a Saturday, nothing about the rate you will be quoted, and nothing about whether anyone answers the phone. Two companies with identical entries can be very different to be a customer of.
It is also not deposit insurance. A licence is a floor under how a regulated institution must operate, which is worth a great deal against an unlicensed alternative and is not a promise about outcomes.
Use it as a disqualifier rather than as a decision. A company that fails this check is off the list. A company that passes it has cleared the first of several bars, and the acquirer checklist is the rest of them.
The question the register cannot answer
Plenty of companies sell payment acceptance without holding the licence themselves. They resell somebody else’s, or they aggregate merchants under a shared account. Neither arrangement is illegitimate and both are common. What is not acceptable is not knowing which one you are in.
Three questions settle it, and all three are fair to ask before signing anything.
- Whose legal name is on the merchant agreement? Not the brand on the deck — the entity in the signature block.
- Do I hold the merchant account, or am I under a shared one? That difference decides who controls your terms and who can stop serving you without notice.
- Whose bank instruction pays me? Follow the money to the entity that actually issues the settlement.
If the three answers are the licensed entity you just looked up, the register result applies to your relationship. If they are not, the register result describes somebody else’s company and you have checked the wrong thing. Acquirer, gateway, PSP takes the roles apart properly.
Uniweb Pay, on the same standard
Uniweb Pte Ltd, trading as Uniweb Pay, is a Major Payment Institution licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore under the Payment Services Act 2019, Licence No. PS20200612, with Merchant Acquisition in its licensed scope. The entry is here in the register — do not take that from this page, open it.
You would contract with Uniweb Pte Ltd, hold the merchant account in your own business’s name, and be settled by Uniweb Pte Ltd. That is the same three answers this page just told you to demand.
One live discrepancy, stated here rather than left to be found: the register carries an older registered address for the company than this site does. The address on this site — Beach Road #23-08A, Gateway East, Singapore 189721 — is current. If a register entry and a company website disagree about anything material, the register is the one to trust and the company is the one that should fix it.
Questions merchants ask
How do I check if a payment company is licensed in Singapore?
Search its legal entity name in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory, the Monetary Authority of Singapore's own public register. It is free and it shows the licence tier and the licensed activities. For merchant payment acceptance, the activity to look for is Merchant Acquisition.
What is the difference between an MPI and an SPI?
They are the two payment institution tiers under the Payment Services Act 2019. They are distinguished by transaction thresholds and by the obligations that attach to each, so which tier a company holds is a real piece of information about the scale it is licensed to operate at.
Does a MAS licence mean my money is guaranteed?
No. A licence means the institution is regulated and carries continuing obligations under the Payment Services Act, including requirements about how customer money is handled for the relevant activities. It is not deposit insurance and it is not a guarantee of service quality or of any commercial outcome.
The company I am talking to is not in the register. Is that a problem?
It may just be a trading name. Search the legal entity instead. If the legal entity is genuinely not there, ask whose licence the service runs under and whose name goes on your merchant agreement — resellers and aggregators are common and legitimate, but you should know which one you are signing with.
Is Uniweb Pay licensed?
Yes. Uniweb Pte Ltd is a Major Payment Institution under the Payment Services Act 2019, MAS Licence No. PS20200612, with Merchant Acquisition in scope — verifiable in the register. Merchants contract with Uniweb Pte Ltd directly and hold the merchant account in their own name.
Talk to us about your counter
Uniweb Pay is a Singapore merchant acquirer, licensed by MAS as a Major Payment Institution (No. PS20200612). Tell us what you sell and who pays you, and we will tell you whether we are the right fit — including when we are not.