The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on August 31, 2026 that it will commit S$220 million over three years to a renewed Financial Sector Technology and Innovation Scheme, FSTI 4.0. The release reads as an expansion, and the number is 46.7% larger than the S$150 million attached to FSTI 3.0 in 2023. It is also the second-smallest headline commitment the scheme has carried: MAS pledged S$250 million over an identical three-year window in August 2020, making FSTI 4.0 a 12% nominal cut before inflation, and S$225 million over five years in 2015.

MAS knows the comparison exists, because it published it — just not in the body of the release. It issued a separate document, Annex: Past Iterations of the Financial Sector Technology Innovation Scheme, setting out all three earlier phases on one page. Annualised, the picture is kinder: S$73.3 million a year for FSTI 4.0 against S$83.3 million for FSTI 2.0, S$50 million for FSTI 3.0 and S$45 million for FSTI 1.0. That is the second-largest annual run-rate in the scheme’s history: a real recovery from the 2023 trough, still short of the COVID-era peak.

Six tracks, one new portal

FSTI 4.0 is built around four goals and six tracks: Manpower, Institution Project, AI Pathfinder, Infrastructure & Platform, Centre of Excellence, and MAS FinTech Awards. Institution Project targets frontier technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), distributed ledger technology and quantum computing; AI Pathfinder funds adoption of market-ready AI solutions listed on PathFin.ai. The Infrastructure & Platform track backs industry-wide infrastructure and, in MAS’s words, aims to strengthen Singapore’s role in shaping global financial standards and interoperability frameworks.

The Manpower track co-funds internship stipends through a new FinTech Internship Portal run by the Singapore FinTech Association, with a target of at least 1,000 internship opportunities over three years. A Global FinTech Hackcelerator Scale-up Grant is the other new item, funding finalists after the competition rather than at the point of recognition.

Two numbers that do not match

MAS has not been fully consistent on the size. The media release describes “a S$220 million commitment over three years.” The FSTI 4.0 scheme page, published the same day, says MAS is committing “up to S$220 million.” FSTI 3.0 was explicitly framed as “up to S$150 million” in 2023, while FSTI 2.0 in 2020 was a flat “S$250 million over the next three years.” If the ceiling reading is the operative one, the gap to 2020 is a floor, not a fixed figure. The 2026 release also carries no quote from a named MAS official — both the 2020 and 2023 announcements did.

Ravi Menon, then Managing Director of MAS, gave the cumulative figure when FSTI 3.0 launched: “Since 2015, the Financial Sector Development Fund has awarded $340 million as part of the FSTI programme to drive the adoption of technology and innovation in the financial sector.” That is disbursed money against roughly S$625 million of commitments announced across the first three phases — headline pledges and awarded grants are different quantities.

Why brokers and infrastructure vendors should care

FSTI is the co-funding line that has underwritten a large share of the capital-markets, RegTech and payments plumbing built in Singapore. Under FSTI 3.0 the Centre of Excellence track funded up to 50% of qualifying expenses, capped at S$2 million per project, and the ESG FinTech track up to 50% capped at S$500,000. Per-track funding rates for FSTI 4.0 have not yet been published, which is the number every payments provider, broker and market-infrastructure vendor with a Singapore entity now needs before it can price a build.

Scale sets the context. Singapore is home to more than 1,800 fintech firms employing close to 10,000 professionals, and fintech investment in the country hit S$2.9 billion in 2025. The entire three-year state commitment equals 7.6% of one year of private investment; annualised, it is 2.5%. As a share of its own ecosystem MAS is now a minority funder, a very different proposition from 2015, when the grant was the market.

The Infrastructure & Platform track is the one to watch. Standards work is now the live constraint on tokenised markets, as the FIX Trading Community’s data-gap submission to the FCA and Bank of England showed, and as the HSBC and Standard Chartered deposit-token netting trial on Swift’s ledger demonstrated in practice. Private capital, meanwhile, is consolidating the compliance layer without grant support, from Cleversoft’s purchase of FS Assist to the Fourthline and Veridas merger struck as fintech deal count fell 26%.

Expect track-level detail before the Singapore FinTech Festival on November 18 to 20, 2026. The question is not whether S$220 million is generous — at this ecosystem size it cannot be decisive — but whether per-project caps rise enough to matter to a firm large enough to build shared infrastructure. If they do not, the track will keep funding pilots while the standards fights are settled elsewhere.

Rick Steves

Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011. He holds a degree in Business Administration and has experience producing real-time news, from both buy-side and sell-side, as well as for retail traders, brokers and service providers. Steves' work has appeared in a variety of online publications including FX Street, NewsBTC, FinanceFeeds, and The Industry Spread. Rick has great interest in the dynamics of the trading industry. The never-ending clash between technology, economics, regulation, and more importantly, the people.