MAS FSTI 4.0: What the S$220 Million Fintech Scheme Means for Singapore Startups’ Governance Obligations

On 31 August 2026, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced a S$220 million commitment over the next three years under the renewed Financial Sector Technology and Innovation Scheme, known as FSTI 4.0. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, who chairs MAS, framed the renewed scheme as helping Singapore’s financial institutions, fintech companies and workforce build capabilities from artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies. The announcement landed shortly before MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun’s address, \”Building the Financial System of the Future: Trusted, Connected and Resilient\”, delivered at the Global FinTech Fest 2026 on 11 September 2026.

FSTI 4.0 succeeds FSTI 3.0, which ran from 2015 and backed more than 350 fintech projects, and lands at a moment when Singapore already hosts more than 1,800 fintech firms employing close to 10,000 professionals, with fintech investment reaching S$2.9 billion in 2025. For founders, that is genuinely significant new capital. But the more useful question is not simply whether a startup can get this money, but what accepting MAS-linked grant funding actually commits a company to, once the funds are disbursed.

This article sets out what FSTI 4.0 funds, who can apply, how it sits alongside more familiar schemes such as Startup SG and the incoming EDGE grant framework, and, most importantly for founders and directors, the governance and compliance obligations that come attached: audit and clawback exposure, statutory record-keeping duties, board approval considerations, and why company secretarial support matters as a fintech scales toward MAS licensing.

What FSTI 4.0 Actually Funds

FSTI 4.0 pursues four strategic goals: helping companies anchor and scale innovation activities in Singapore, accelerating the development and deployment of financial technologies with a focus on frontier technology, building out shared technology infrastructure, and developing local fintech talent. MAS is delivering these goals through six operational tracks, several of which are new or substantially reshaped from the previous FSTI 3.0 structure, which itself covered tracks such as Centre of Excellence, Industry-wide Technological Infrastructure, Innovation Acceleration, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, ESG FinTech, Regulatory Technology and Quantum Technology.

The Six FSTI 4.0 Tracks at a Glance

The table below summarises what each track supports, based on MAS’s own announcement.

Notably, the Manpower track co-funds internship stipends for students from institutes of higher learning, with MAS aiming to support at least 1,000 fintech internship placements over the scheme’s three-year duration, connected through a dedicated portal, fintechinternships.sg, managed by the Singapore FinTech Association. For a fintech founder building a team, this is a direct and comparatively low-friction way to bring in subsidised talent alongside the more capital-intensive project tracks.

Who Can Apply, and How FSTI 4.0 Sits Alongside Other Schemes

FSTI 4.0’s Institution Project and AI Pathfinder tracks are open to Singapore-based financial institutions and fintech firms developing or deploying solutions in frontier areas, while the Centre of Excellence track targets financial institutions, corporate venture capital entities and global technology companies looking to anchor a Singapore presence. As with prior FSTI iterations, applicants typically engage MAS directly to discuss proposals well ahead of the intended start date, since funding decisions and letters of offer take time to process.

FSTI 4.0, Startup SG and EDGE: Different Doors, Same Corridor

A common founder mistake is treating FSTI 4.0 as a substitute for the broader Enterprise Singapore grant landscape, when in practice it usually complements it. A fintech at the earliest incorporation stage may still rely on Startup SG Founder, Tech or Equity funding to get off the ground, well before it has the regulatory maturity or MAS relationship needed to access FSTI 4.0’s institution-level tracks. Once a fintech is generating revenue and looking at digital transformation, capability building or overseas expansion outside FSTI’s specific scope, the incoming EDGE consolidated grant framework, which folds the Enterprise Development Grant, Productivity Solutions Grant and Market Readiness Assistance grant into a single track from H2 2026, is usually the more relevant door.

The rule that governs combining any of these schemes is the same one that applies across Singapore’s grant landscape: the same cost cannot be funded twice. A founder running an AI Pathfinder project under FSTI 4.0 while separately claiming a digital adoption cost under EDGE, or a training subsidy under a SkillsFuture scheme, needs to map every qualifying cost to exactly one grant source. Our guide on how to stack Singapore government grants sets out the sequencing and record-keeping discipline this requires in more detail, and the same principle applies whether the schemes in question are administered by Enterprise Singapore or by MAS.

The Governance Side Nobody Talks About: Grant Conditions and Clawback Risk

FSTI 4.0 grants, like most Singapore government funding, are not free money with no strings attached. Institution Project and AI Pathfinder disbursements are typically structured against a letter of offer that specifies approved cost categories, project milestones and a claims process, often on a co-funding or reimbursement basis similar to Enterprise Singapore’s PSG, EDG and MRA schemes. That structure carries the same audit and clawback exposure: MAS or its administering agency can review whether claimed costs were genuinely incurred, whether they fall within approved categories, and whether the funded deliverable, an AI model, a shared platform, or a completed internship placement, was actually achieved.

For a fintech founder, a grant approval is the start of a compliance obligation, not the end of one. Our companion article on grant claims, audit and clawback risk explains the documents an administering agency typically wants to see if a claim is queried: the original letter of offer, signed vendor or employment contracts, invoices matching those contracts, and evidence the funded outcome was actually delivered. A change mid-project, a different AI vendor, a restructured cap table, or a founder who leaves before an internship placement is completed, should be flagged to MAS proactively rather than left for an audit to uncover.

Statutory Bookkeeping and Record-Keeping Duties Tied to Grant Claims

Grant income and grant-funded expenditure need to sit cleanly in a company’s own books, not just in the grant administrator’s files. Under the Companies Act 1967, every Singapore company must keep proper accounting records sufficient to explain its transactions and financial position, and retain them for at least five years. For a company running an FSTI-funded project alongside its ordinary operations, that means coding grant receipts and the associated project costs distinctly in the general ledger, reconciling them against the letter of offer’s approved categories, and being able to produce a clean audit trail on request, rather than reconstructing one after the fact.

This record-keeping duty sits on top of, not instead of, the routine statutory obligations every Singapore private company already carries: maintaining the registers of directors, members and controllers, filing annual returns with ACRA, and keeping board and shareholder resolutions properly minuted. Our guide to company secretary statutory duties under the Companies Act covers the baseline obligations in detail, including the common rejection reasons and governance gaps that ACRA filings and internal reviews turn up most often. A fintech juggling a live MAS grant claim alongside these baseline duties is precisely the kind of company where a lapsed register or an unminuted resolution tends to surface at the worst possible moment, typically when a grant auditor or a prospective investor asks to see it.

Board Approvals and Your Company’s Constitution

Accepting a grant of this size is rarely a decision a founder should make unilaterally, even where they hold majority equity. Most letters of offer carry binding conditions, around intellectual property, cost caps, reporting obligations and potential clawback, that a well-governed board should formally approve by resolution before signature, both to create a clear record of authority and to protect individual directors from personal exposure if the terms are later disputed. Founders should also check their company’s constitution for any restriction on the directors’ borrowing or spending powers, since a grant condition committing the company to future expenditure can, in some structures, require shareholder as well as board approval.

This becomes more layered for fintechs with an investment or fund component, for example a startup building toward a licensed fund management arm alongside its core platform. Our article on corporate secretarial duties for a VCC or family office SPV sets out how governance obligations multiply once a fund vehicle sits alongside an operating company.

Scaling Toward MAS Licensing: Why Company Secretarial Support Matters

Many FSTI 4.0 applicants are, by design, fintechs on a trajectory toward MAS licensing, whether under the Payment Services Act for payment or e-money activities, or under the Securities and Futures Act for fund management. A company that receives FSTI 4.0 funding today and applies for a licence eighteen months later will find that MAS’s licensing review looks closely at exactly the governance discipline described above: whether statutory registers are current, board minutes properly reflect key decisions, the register of registrable controllers is accurate, and the company’s record-keeping can withstand scrutiny.

A fintech that treats corporate secretarial work as a low priority during its grant-funded growth phase often finds itself doing expensive remedial work at exactly the point it can least afford delay: during a live MAS licence application. Building that discipline early is considerably cheaper than retrofitting it once a licensing application is already in motion.

Beyond compliance, sound financial planning around business investment decisions matters just as much for founders scaling a fintech, since grant funding is only ever part of a much broader capital picture. For founders and directors tracking how these schemes evolve, Singapore business news and regulatory updates are a useful complement to the scheme-specific detail covered here.

Conclusion

FSTI 4.0’s S$220 million commitment is a genuine vote of confidence in Singapore’s fintech sector, and the six-track structure gives founders more entry points than the scheme’s predecessor. But the money comes with the same governance discipline that accompanies any Singapore government grant: a letter of offer to honour, costs to document, deliverables to prove, and statutory records that need to stand up to scrutiny. For fintech founders expecting to apply for a MAS licence within a few years of taking FSTI 4.0 funding, treating corporate secretarial support as a strategic function, not an afterthought, is one of the more sensible investments available.

To speak with the team at Raffles Corporate Services, you can email [email protected] or call, SMS, or WhatsApp +65 8501 7133. We are happy to assist with any queries.

The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services