MAS-licensed crypto exchanges in Singapore

If you only remember one thing from this page, make it this: in Singapore, the question “is this exchange legal?” has a public, checkable answer. Under the Payment Services Act 2019, any business offering digital payment token (DPT) services to people here needs a licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. MAS publishes every licensee in its Financial Institutions Directory, and anyone can search it in under a minute.

The catch is that the directory is not written for consumers. It lists legal entity names, not brands, and it mixes retail apps with market makers, custodians and stablecoin issuers that you will never deal with directly. So we filtered it, grouped the results and translated the names into the brands you actually know.

The full list of 38 DPT licensees

We ran the directory’s own filter on 20 October 2026: sector Payments, category Major Payment Institution, activity Digital Payment Token Service. It returned 38 entries. You can run the same filter on the MAS site and compare. The grouping below is ours, based on how each firm presents itself publicly. MAS does not label licensees as retail or institutional, and a firm’s focus can change, so always check what the Singapore entity offers before you sign up.

Two practical points follow from the list. First, “licensed” and “for you” are different things. A market maker such as GSR or Cumberland is as licensed as Coinbase, but it will not open an account for someone with S$500 and a phone. Second, the retail shortlist is short. If you want a Singapore-regulated app, your realistic choice is among the first ten rows, and we compare those side by side on the exchange comparison table. If you are moving S$50,000 or more, several of the institutional names become relevant, and our OTC guide explains who accepts individuals.

MPI, SPI, in-principle approval and exempt firms

The Payment Services Act has three licence classes: money-changing, Standard Payment Institution (SPI) and Major Payment Institution (MPI). For crypto, only the last two matter.

Standard Payment Institution. An SPI licence is meant for smaller operators below set volume thresholds: broadly, an average of S$3 million a month for any one payment service, S$6 million for two or more, or an e-money float of S$5 million. In theory a small crypto business could hold one. In practice no SPI was licensed for DPT service when we checked, so every crypto licensee you will meet is an MPI.

Major Payment Institution. The full licence, with the full set of obligations: capital requirements, anti-money-laundering controls under MAS Notice PSN02, technology risk management, and since 2024 the consumer-protection rules on segregating customer assets. This is the licence the 38 firms above hold.

In-principle approval (IPA). An IPA tells a firm that MAS is prepared to license it once it meets the remaining conditions. It is a milestone, not a licence. Gemini, for example, received IPA in October 2024 and its full licence only on 8 September 2026. Marketing that says “MAS approved” when the firm only holds an IPA is misleading, and MAS can withdraw an IPA.

Exempt firms. Banks licensed under the Banking Act do not need a separate payment-services licence, which is how DBS Bank can run DBS Digital Exchange for accredited investors. For a few years after the Act took effect in January 2020, firms that were already operating could also continue under a transitional exemption while MAS assessed their applications. That is how Tokenize Xchange kept trading until it was refused a licence; it ended its Singapore operations on 30 September 2025. A firm that tells you today it is “exempt” and is not a bank deserves hard questions.

How to check a crypto firm yourself

Lists like this one go out of date. The directory does not. This check takes two minutes and is worth doing before every new account, and again if a firm’s app suddenly asks you to move funds somewhere new.

1. Find the legal entity, not the brand

   Scroll to the footer or terms page of the app or website and note the Singapore company name, for example “SBI Coinhako Technology” rather than “Coinhako”. Scam sites often skip this or name a company that does not exist.

2. Search the MAS Financial Institutions Directory

   Open eservices.mas.gov.sg/fid and search by name. Open the entry and check the licence type is Major Payment Institution and that Digital Payment Token Service is listed as an activity.

3. Match the details

   Compare the website address and contact details in the directory with the site you are on. A cloned site can copy a licensed firm’s name and licence number but cannot change what MAS lists.

4. Check the Investor Alert List

   Search the same name, and the website address, on the MAS Investor Alert List. Any hit is a reason to stop.

5. Be wary of “we are regulated elsewhere”

   Licences in other countries can be real and meaningful, but they do not bring Singapore’s protections with them. Know which kind of firm you are dealing with before you deposit.

One more test is worth adding: licensed platforms in Singapore cannot pay you to trade, cannot offer retail customers leverage and cannot take locally issued credit cards for crypto. An app that offers a sign-up bonus in SGD, 50x leverage and credit-card top-ups to Singapore residents is, by definition, not operating as a Singapore licensee.

Why some famous names aren’t on the list

Many of the biggest names in global crypto are absent, and the reasons differ. It helps to know which absence is a warning and which is simply a business choice.

Binance has been on the MAS Investor Alert List since 2 September 2021. Its Singapore arm, Binance.sg, closed on 13 February 2022, and Binance stopped serving Singapore residents. Bybit geo-blocks Singapore users and was added to the Investor Alert List on 17 June 2026. Hyperliquid was added on 26 June 2026, and KuCoin and Bitget have been reported on the list too. For these firms, the absence from the directory is a red flag rather than a gap.

Kraken is a long-established exchange regulated in several countries, but it does not hold a Singapore licence. Bullish, which is licensed elsewhere, is also not on the DPT list. Luno left Singapore on 20 June 2023 and Tokenize Xchange followed in September 2025.

CEX.IO is a different case worth being precise about. It has operated since 2013 and runs regulated entities abroad: it is registered with FinCEN as a money services business in the United States and holds state money-transmitter licences there, it has a UK entity (CEX.IO Markets UK Ltd, FRN 1007192), and it says it holds more than 30 licences and registrations worldwide. It applied to MAS in 2020 but is not in the directory, so it serves Singapore residents from abroad. That is legal for you as a user, but the Payment Services Act protections described below do not apply to your account. Our CEX.IO review covers the trade-off honestly.

A final category applies to companies run from Singapore. Since 30 June 2025, firms based here that serve only overseas clients need a licence under Part 9 of the Financial Services and Markets Act, and MAS has said it will generally not issue one. Several exchanges moved staff and entities elsewhere as a result. The legal guide explains that regime in more detail.

What a MAS licence protects, and what it doesn’t

A licence is not a guarantee, and it is worth being clear about the difference. Here is what you get with an MPI licensee that you would not get from an offshore platform.

• Customer assets held in a statutory trust and kept separate from the company’s own, under the measures MAS announced in July 2023.
• No lending or staking of retail customers’ coins by the platform.
• A risk awareness assessment before you trade, no trading incentives, no leverage for retail customers and no locally issued credit cards, under the November 2023 measures phased in from mid-2024.
• MAS supervision of anti-money-laundering controls, technology risk and how the firm handles customer money.
• Advertising limited to the firm’s own website, app and social accounts, under the January 2022 guidelines, so you will not be chased by influencers or MRT posters.

And here is what it does not do. It does not protect you from prices falling, which is by far the most common way people lose money. Crypto held on an exchange is not covered by deposit insurance in the way a bank deposit is. And according to ScamShield, MAS cannot help you recover money lost through crypto investments or transactions, even on MAS-regulated platforms. If you send coins from a licensed exchange to a scammer’s wallet, the licence does nothing to bring them back. That is why our scams guide matters as much as this list.

It also does not make every product the firm offers globally a Singapore-regulated product. Global websites often show staking, lending or derivatives that the Singapore entity does not offer. Check which entity you have signed up with and which services it says are regulated.

The Investor Alert List

The Investor Alert List is the directory’s mirror image: unregulated entities that MAS says may have been wrongly perceived as licensed or authorised. It was last updated on 17 September 2026 when we checked. Being on it is not a criminal finding, but it is MAS telling you, as plainly as a regulator ever does, not to rely on that firm.

The list includes well-known offshore exchanges as well as obvious scam sites, and new entries appear regularly. Search it by company name and by website address, because scam sites change names often but sometimes reuse domains. If a contact from WhatsApp or Telegram is steering you to a platform, check it here first, and read how to report a crypto scam if anything looks wrong.

With a licensed platform chosen, the next practical questions are funding and cost. Our guides to buying crypto with PayNow and the cheapest way to buy Bitcoin pick up from here, and the Coinhako and Gemini reviews look closely at two of the licensees above.