B2B financial marketplace Fiserv has been granted a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) for its local operating entity. Effective as of 1 January 2023, the licence enables the company to provide merchant acquisition services, as well as domestic and cross-border money transfer services under the Payment Services Act (PS Act) 2019.

Fiserv offering and how the receival of the MPI licence falls into place As detailed in the announcement, Fiserv is a global payments and financial services technology solutions provider with regional headquarters in Singapore, that has been offering solutions to banks, fintechs, and merchants in the region and across the Asia Pacific for more than two decades. The company provides end-to-end payment acceptance solutions for Singapore-based small businesses, as well as for large enterprise clients, looking to facilitate integrated payment acceptance across physical and digital channels, and offering an extensive range of payment methods both locally and at global scale. The receival of the MPI licence enables the continued offering of merchant acquiring services in Singapore and is set to allow the company to support new payment flows for its clients, including those of the likes of cross-border funds transfer services and real-time account transfers.

Having a well-established global risk and controls framework and global cybersecurity services, Fiserv helps ensure adherence to the regulations established under the PS Act in Singapore, as well as the regulatory bodies in global markets in which the company operates. As part of the MPI licence obligations, as well as its own internal standards, Fiserv is set to keep on improving its rigorous compliance programme, which includes measures for anti-money laundering and anti-terrorism financing, as well as cybersecurity standards for the protection of customer data. When commenting on the announcement, Fiserv officials advised that the company has a history of payments innovation in Singapore and stated that they are well-positioned and committed to expand their merchant acquiring business in the country and beyond.

Simultaneously, the company will continue to support the merchant community with robust and secure payments technology, looking to enable locally relevant payment acceptance solutions that meet today’s consumer demands. Fiserv recent developments With the start of 2023 and throughout 2022, Fiserv announced a multitude of developments, from partnerships to product launches. Its most recent announcement marks the January 2023 partnership with BNY Mellon, under which financial institutions that leverage its Payments Exchange: Foreign Exchange Services were enabled access to BNY Mellon's real-time FX rate quotes in more than 120 countries.

Following this collaboration, US-based financial institutions were given the option to carry out currency conversions for cross-border payments while benefiting from rate visibility upfront. Another notable announcement was the June 2022 update of its portfolio of payment options available to businesses using its Carat operating system to include digital checks. Following the introduction of this capability, businesses that deliver mass payouts were enabled to provide additional choice to their customers.

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