The daily average value of payments cleared through MAS-operated systems exceeded SGD 241 billion in 2024, reflecting Singapore's position as a critical node in global financial flows and demonstrating the scalability of the Monetary Authority of Singapore's payment infrastructure in supporting wholesale, retail, and securities settlement activity.

The MEPS+ System: Scale and Throughput

The Monetary Authority of Singapore's flagship large-value payment system, MEPS+ (Monetary Electronic Payments System Plus), processed a total of 7.24 million transactions valued at SGD 33.08 trillion in 2023, according to the MAS's most recent PFMI Disclosure Report. This translates to approximately 28,500 transactions valued at roughly SGD 130 billion on an average daily basis in 2023.

By 2024, the daily average value of payments cleared across all MAS-operated systems—encompassing MEPS+ for interbank funds transfers and scripless Singapore Government Securities and MAS Bills transactions, plus the Singapore Automated Clearing House (SACH) for retail payments—exceeded SGD 241 billion. This represents a roughly 85% increase in daily average clearing value compared to MEPS+ alone in 2023, reflecting the aggregated throughput of wholesale and retail settlement systems operating under MAS oversight.

Composition of Payment Flows

The breadth of Singapore's payment ecosystem is captured in MAS's semi-annual retail payment statistics. For the full year 2024, cheque clearing through SACH totalled SGD 353.1 billion in value (H1: SGD 172.5 billion; H2: SGD 180.6 billion). Interbank GIRO, the electronic debit/credit transfer system, processed SGD 621.3 billion in value over the full year. FAST (Fast And Secure Transfers), Singapore's real-time retail payment system, handled 380 million transactions worth SGD 486.9 billion in 2024, up from 292 million transactions worth SGD 380.6 billion in 2023.

Total card payments—including POS and card-not-present transactions across credit, charge, and debit cards—reached SGD 141.9 billion in value in 2024, with 1.98 billion transactions. E-money transactions, reflecting stored-value facilities and digital wallet usage, reached 2.22 billion transactions valued at SGD 2.43 billion.

Total Value (SGD billions) (SGD billions)Source: Orionmano Industries

Infrastructure Resilience and Operational Standards

MAS maintains MEPS+ through high availability standards. In 2022, MEPS+ IFT and SGS achieved 100% availability; in 2023, this remained at 99.96% for both components, per MAS's PFMI disclosure. The system supports real-time gross settlement (RTGS) with participants receiving real-time access to account balances, holdings, and transaction statuses, alongside liquidity management tools for prioritisation and queue management.

MAS monitors MEPS+ payment patterns through daily statistics reports covering payment and queue status, monthly summaries of peak and average transaction volume, and annual transaction volume reports. A near-real-time monitoring utility alerts MAS to payment anomalies, including when a participant has outstanding transactions that remain queued.

Fraud, Scams, and the Cost of Scale

The scale of Singapore's payment systems also carries operational risk exposure. Singapore lost SGD 913 million to scams in 2025, down from the SGD 1.1 billion peak in 2024, according to the Singapore Police Force via the iPiD blog. In April 2024, MAS launched COSMIC (Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Information and Cases), the first centralised platform globally enabling financial institutions to share customer information on suspected financial crime in real time. Co-developed with DBS, OCBC, UOB, Citibank, HSBC, and Standard Chartered, COSMIC removes confidentiality barriers that previously prevented banks from warning each other about suspicious account holders.

The high daily settlement volumes across MEPS+ and supporting retail systems underscore the importance of fraud detection infrastructure operating at equivalent speed and scale.

Global Context and Benchmarking

For context, the U.S. Fedwire system alone processed approximately USD 1.09 quadrillion in 2023, according to McKinsey's Global Payments Report, as cited in Talli.ai's mass-payouts statistics. Singapore's MEPS+ annual throughput of SGD 33.08 trillion (approximately USD 24.6 trillion at prevailing exchange rates) positions it as a significant but focused system, primarily serving Singapore-dollar interbank, securities, and foreign exchange settlement, including CLS settlement obligations.

The real-time payments segment globally was valued at USD 24–25 billion in 2024, with projections to reach USD 114.94 billion by 2032 at a 32.23% CAGR, reflecting regulatory mandates, consumer expectations for immediacy, and competitive pressures. Singapore's FAST system, handling 380 million transactions worth SGD 486.9 billion in 2024, is a mature real-time rail that has been operational since 2014, positioning the city-state ahead of many jurisdictions that are only now building instant payment infrastructure.

Outlook

Singapore's payment infrastructure continues to scale with financial market growth. The shift from SGD 130 billion daily average in MEPS+ (2023) to over SGD 241 billion across all MAS-operated systems (2024) reflects both recovery in transaction volumes and structural growth in securities, foreign exchange, and cross-border settlement activity. As MAS continues to expand MEPS+ functionality and integrate with regional payment systems—including the ASEAN cross-border payment connectivity initiatives—the daily average value cleared through MAS-operated systems is likely to continue its upward trajectory, placing further demands on operational resilience and fraud detection infrastructure.