Open a SGD Virtual Bank Account

You receive your own SGD account details connected to Singapore's domestic payment infrastructure - usable for FAST, GIRO, and PayNow in your business name. Customers and platforms see a local Singapore account on their end, not an intermediary's pooled account labeled in your name. That distinction matters because some Singapore corporates and government-linked payers won't release funds to a virtual reference number that doesn't sit on a local rail.

No. The entire point of a virtual account is to access the local rails without going through Singapore incorporation, the nominee director requirement, or annual ACRA filings. Your foreign entity remains the legal account holder.

FAST is a 24/7 real-time rail and credits within seconds, capped at S$200,000 per transaction (recently raised from S$50K). GIRO is a batch rail used for recurring corporate disbursements - payroll, government grants, B2B settlements - and posts on the same or next banking day. PayNow inflows are also supported; clients can pay you by entering a PayNow-linked identifier rather than your full account number.

There's no MAS-level cap on a regulated SGD business account. The transaction-level ceiling on FAST is S$200,000 and PayNow's individual sender limits are set by each sending bank. Inbound holding limits on your Woalet account are set during onboarding based on your verified business profile and projected volume - they're not the retail S$5,000 e-wallet ceiling that personal Wise users complain about on r/singaporefi.

No setup fee, no monthly maintenance, and no minimum balance. You pay a small inbound fee on collections, an FX spread on conversions that's negotiated by volume rather than a fixed published rate, and a per-transfer cost on payouts. We'll provide a written quote once we understand your monthly flow.

You can pay any local SGD beneficiary via FAST, GIRO, or PayNow - suppliers, contractors, landlords. CPF contributions specifically require a registered Singapore employer (UEN), so they're outside the scope of a virtual account; for that you'd still need a Singapore entity. The virtual account works cleanly for contractor and B2B payments, which is the common use case for foreign companies serving Singapore clients.

In most cases, yes - your SGD details function as a standard local receiving account on those platforms. We recommend checking the specific platform's beneficiary requirements during onboarding; some payroll providers ask for a matching UEN, which a foreign-incorporated business won't have.

Not by itself. Holding a virtual SGD balance doesn't establish a permanent establishment under IRAS rules. What can trigger Singapore tax exposure is the nature of the underlying business activity - if you have employees, a fixed place of business, or significant onshore activity in Singapore, the income could be considered Singapore-sourced regardless of where the account sits. We can't give tax advice, but it's a good question to put to a Singapore tax adviser before scaling.

Three differences come up most often. We don't apply MAS e-wallet retail caps that limit Wise personal accounts to ~S$30K annually - your account is a business-tier setup from day one. FX is negotiated per client rather than a fixed published markup. And we settle natively in USDC/USDT if you prefer stablecoin treasury, which neither Wise nor Airwallex offer for SGD.

Standard business KYC: certificate of incorporation, register of directors and shareholders, UBO documentation for owners above the threshold, proof of registered office, and ID for signatories. No Singapore UEN, work pass, or local address required.

FAST is operated by the Banking Computer Services consortium under MAS oversight and is the same rail that local Singapore banks use for SGD instant transfers. The S$200,000 per-transaction ceiling is the practical limit; for larger amounts, payers use MEPS+ or a multi-transaction split. Either way, funds reach your account through the regulated banking system.