Singapore Grants Gemini a Full Payments License

SINGAPORE — The Monetary Authority of Singapore has granted Gemini a Major Payment Institution license, the city-state’s top tier of authorization for digital-payment-token and cross-border transfer services. The MAS Financial Institutions Directory now lists Gemini Digital Payments Singapore as an MPI, cleared to offer spot trading, custody and over-the-counter services to retail and institutional clients.

“Securing the MPI license from MAS validates our commitment and investment into Singapore,” said Cameron Winklevoss, Gemini’s president and co-founder, in the exchange’s September 8 announcement. The firm has served customers in the country since 2020.

What the license changes

Under Singapore’s Payment Services Act, a Major Payment Institution operates without the transaction-volume caps imposed on standard payment firms, in exchange for heavier supervision and stricter customer-fund safeguards. For an exchange, it is the difference between a foothold and a full regional base.

Gemini joins a roster of global firms that have made Singapore their Asia-Pacific headquarters for regulated operations — Coinbase, OKX, BitGo and Anchorage among them, with Ripple’s local unit recently winning an expanded license. For an asset whose whole point is that it needs no permission, the irony is familiar: the deepest pools of institutional bitcoin demand keep forming exactly where the paperwork is hardest to get.

Tightening and opening at once

The approval lands days after MAS proposed, on September 1, to bar interest payments on regulated stablecoins and to add stress tests, recovery plans and orderly wind-down requirements. The same regulator is tightening one hand while opening the other — welcoming licensed exchanges while narrowing what the instruments traded on them may promise.

Singapore consistently ranks at or near the top of global adoption indices, and it is among the most bitcoin-dense financial centers in the world by wealth. A full license for a major exchange there is less a surprise than a confirmation: the money that wants regulated bitcoin exposure is being met by a jurisdiction happy to supply the rails.

Why it matters: the institutional bid for bitcoin keeps concentrating in the handful of hubs willing to license it — and Singapore just made itself a wider door.

License scope, the Winklevoss statement and the September 1 MAS stablecoin proposal per Gemini’s Sept 8, 2026 announcement and reporting Sept 10. Informational only — not financial advice.