18 July, 2019
On 14 January 2019, the Payment Services Act 2019 (“PS Act”), which will consolidate the existing regimes governing the provision of payment services in Singapore and bring certain unregulated activities into the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (“MAS”) regulatory portfolio, was passed by the Singapore Parliament. For more information on the PS Act, please refer to our earlier client update found here.
To effect the objectives of the PS Act, MAS intends to prescribe or issue the following instruments:
(a) regulations and one order under the PS Act;
(b) anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (“AML/CFT”) notices under the MAS Act;
(c) notices under the PS Act;and
(d) guidelines.
Items (a) and (b) were published for consultation on 10 April 2019 and 6 June 2019 respectively. For more information, please refer to our earlier client updates found here and here, respectively.
While the PS Act is targeted to come into force in January 2020, MAS intends to publish the commencement notification for the PS Act, as well as all finalised versions of the subsidiary legislation and regulatory instruments, at least four weeks before the PS Act commencement date, so that the industry will have adequate notice.
This update outlines MAS’s key proposals on the notices and guidelines in items (c) and (d), as well as a related exchange rate provision in the Payment Services Regulations and the Payment Services (Saving and Transitional) Regulations.
