Fintech Firm Sunrate Secures Initial License Nod for Money Services in Malaysia

Sunrate has been issued with a money services business license approval-in-principle by Bank Negara Malaysia which is the central bank of the country. The Singapore-based firm offers its services as payment and treasury management to companies.

Under this license, Sunrate intends to establish Malaysia as its operations hub in the whole world and grow its workforce in the nation.

The company already enjoys licenses in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, UK and mainland China. Sunrate has indicated that it seeks to assist companies in Malaysia with treasury and cross border payment services.

The choice by SUNRATE to make Malaysia its operations hub globally follows the fact that the country was able to develop global fintech operations that do not only involve access to the domestic markets.

Key Highlights

• Sunrate receives Bank Negara Malaysia's approval-in-principle for money services license.
• Malaysia to become Sunrate’s global operations hub for cross-border payment services.
• Fintech-friendly regulations and sandbox framework drive Sunrate’s expansion in Southeast Asia.

In 2016, Bank Negara Malaysia became one of the first agencies to launch a regulatory sandbox, which has since become an all-encompassing framework to conduct international fintech activities .

The decision to use Malaysia as a global operations location as opposed to a mere market location shows how the regulatory strategy in the country has made it a good base to expand internationally across the whole of Southeast Asia.

This is correlated with the general trends in South East Asia, where the value of fintech startups is US$150 billion in 2020 with 66 percent more new startups between 2018 and 2022.

The RM 200-250 million fintech ecosystem budget that the Malaysian government has been giving each year has also contributed to Malaysia having an ecosystem that serves local innovation and international operations.