Megan Harper
Singapore, Dec 24, 2025 (Year-in-Review) – As 2025 draws to a close, the foundational shifts in financial technology can be traced back to the industry’s most pivotal gatherings. At the Annual FinTech Summit 2025, held in February at the Holiday Inn Singapore Atrium, the consensus established early in the year proved prophetic: the industry’s true north is “Agentic AI” and the maturation of the digital banking stack.
The Big Picture: Organized by The People Events, the three-day summit served as a strategic laboratory that set the pace for the Asia-Pacific fintech landscape. Under the theme “Cutting-edge Fintech Innovations and Research in Finance,” the event addressed the structural evolution of digital banks. Looking back, the summit successfully anticipated the move from “why to adopt” to “how to scale” autonomous and trusted systems throughout 2025.
Key Takeaways:
- Agentic AI as a Strategic Engine: The summit accurately predicted the transition from predictive models to autonomous actors. Leaders like Shadab Taiyabi (Singapore FinTech Association) and Kelvin Phua (BridgeWise) emphasized that AI is no longer a support tool but a core engine for investment intelligence, enabling the real-time, data-driven decision-making that dominated the latter half of the year.
- Evolution from E-Wallets to Digital Banks: A defining theme of 2025 was the maturation of the digital banking stack. Anthony Sheyantha Abeykoon (Boost) and Pei Si Lai (GXBank) detailed the roadmap that has since redefined banking in Southeast Asia, moving platforms from simple payment tools into the comprehensive, AI-driven financial institutions we see today.
- The Privacy and Trust Mandate: As financial crime became more sophisticated this year, Privacy Enhancing Technology (PET) emerged as a strategic necessity. Mark Medum Bundgaard (Partisia) and Eric Margaryan(Tookitaki) highlighted the development of “Trust Layers” that allow for robust fraud detection without compromising regulatory compliance—a standard that has become mandatory by year-end.
The Bottom Line: The Annual FinTech Summit 2025 demonstrated that Singapore remains the premier proving ground for “Applied FinTech.” The deep focus on Quantum Computing and Blockchain-based services early in the year correctly identified the infrastructure that is now successfully withstanding the computational challenges of late 2025.
What’s Next: The academic insights from the summit’s Best Poster Presentation and Young Researcher award winners have already begun setting the new benchmarks for 2026, where the focus will shift toward seamless “Cross-Border Interoperability” and decentralized regtech integration.
Official Media Partner: AIPressRoom reviewed the strategic dialogue from the Annual FinTech Summit 2025 in Singapore.
