Virtual Bank Accounts for Singapore Businesses: How They Work and Key Benefits [2026]

The provider with the best interest rate on its homepage is often the one you can't actually use.

That's not how these comparisons usually get framed. Most treat this as a straight shootout on rates and fees, and on paper GXS's 1.08% p.a. looks better than the account next to it. But GXS's business account is currently restricted to sole proprietorships. If you run a Pte Ltd, that 1.08% is not available to you, no matter how the comparison table displays it. The real filter isn't the interest rate. It's whether you're eligible to open the account at all.

This guide covers what a virtual bank account actually is (and isn't: "virtual account" means something else), the three types of providers serving Singapore businesses, exactly what each one charges and who each one will actually accept, and how to choose between them in 2026.

What Is a Virtual Bank Account?

A virtual bank account is a digital financial account that lets businesses manage their finances entirely online, through a mobile app or web platform, without visiting a physical branch.

Most virtual bank accounts let you:

• Send and receive payments
• Hold and manage account balances
• Access transaction histories
• Transfer funds locally and internationally
• Issue virtual payment cards
• Earn interest on deposits

Virtual Bank Account vs. Virtual Account: What's the Difference?

These two terms get used interchangeably. They shouldn't be.

A virtual bank account is a full business account that exists entirely online. You receive payments, hold balances, and send transfers from it, the same as any bank account, just without a branch.

A virtual account (or virtual account number) is a payment-tracking tool, not a standalone account. Some traditional banks assign a unique account number to each of your customers. When a customer pays into their number, the funds land in your one real business account, and the payment gets automatically matched to the right invoice. You never actually hold money "in" a virtual account: it's a label that routes payments and helps you reconcile them, not a wallet.

If you want somewhere to open and run your day-to-day business banking online, you want a virtual bank account, and that's what the rest of this guide covers. If you want a way to automatically match incoming customer payments to invoices without manual reconciliation, you want virtual account numbers instead, a cash-management feature some traditional banks and payment platforms offer on top of a regular account.

3 Types of Online Business Accounts in Singapore

Most comparisons frame this as a two-way choice: traditional bank or digital bank. That skips a real third option a growing number of Singapore SMEs already use.

Traditional banks run physical branches but increasingly offer online business account opening too. Some steps, particularly for foreign-owned companies, still require in-person verification. Our guide to opening a business account in Singapore walks through what to expect.

MAS-licensed digital banks operate entirely online, with no physical branches at all, under one of two licence types. Digital Full Banks (DFB) serve both retail customers and businesses: GXS Bank and MariBank. Digital Wholesale Banks (DWB) serve only businesses and institutional clients, not individuals: ANEXT Bank and Green Link Digital Bank.

Fintech platforms holding a Major Payment Institution licence aren't banks, and MAS regulates them under a different framework. Day to day, they let you send and receive payments, hold multi-currency balances, and manage everything from an app. Statrys is one example, and tends to lean harder into cross-border features than a domestic digital bank does.

Singapore officially calls the middle category "digital banks." Hong Kong calls the equivalent licence "virtual banks." Same idea, different local term.

Benefits of Virtual Bank Accounts

Most virtual bank accounts charge no account-opening fee, no monthly maintenance fee, and no fall-below fee, which adds up fast against a traditional account that charges all three. If your business pays overseas suppliers or gets paid from abroad, they typically beat traditional banks on FX rates and transfer fees too, and several pay daily or annual interest on your balance, something most business current accounts skip entirely.

Setup is also faster online, against weeks at some traditional banks, especially if your company has foreign ownership. And several providers offer fast business financing with less paperwork than a traditional bank loan, though as the next section shows, the amounts and eligibility swing hard by provider.

The 4 MAS-Licensed Digital Banks: Rates, Fees, and Who Can Actually Apply

Every figure below is checked directly against each provider's own website as of 7 July 2026: GXS Bank, MariBank, ANEXT Bank, and Green Link Digital Bank.

GXS Bank pays the best headline rate on this list, and it's genuinely a strong option, if you qualify. The Biz Account is currently open only to sole proprietorships with an active ACRA registration. Run a Pte Ltd, a partnership, or an LLP, and GXS isn't available to you, regardless of what the marketing page implies. FlexiLoan Biz itself tops out at SGD 150,000. The SGD 1M ceiling belongs to separate GXS Capital financing products (Invoice Financing, Purchase Order Financing), which carry their own separate eligibility checks.

MariBank casts a wider net: sole proprietorships, plus Pte Ltd companies, partnerships, or LLPs, provided none of them have a corporate shareholder or partner. Every owner, director, and 25%+ shareholder also needs Singpass access: Singapore citizen, permanent resident, or foreigner with Singpass. A company owned by another company, or run by a director without Singpass, doesn't qualify here either.

ANEXT Bank is the one MAS digital bank built for genuine multi-currency holding, across SGD, USD, CNH, and EUR, with a flat SGD 15 SWIFT fee regardless of destination. That flat pricing is easier to plan around than a percentage-based FX margin if you pay overseas suppliers on a predictable schedule. It's a Digital Wholesale Bank, so it isn't SDIC-insured. More on what that actually means below.

Green Link Digital Bank skips day-to-day transaction banking in favour of trade finance: payables financing, receivables financing, and supply chain financing. It's a better fit for a business with working capital tied up in invoices than for a simple operating account. It supports SGD and USD, and publishes its rate card and fee schedule on its own site, though not on the homepage, so you'll need to check its Support section directly.

One name that's conspicuously absent: Trust Bank. It runs fully online too, but it isn't one of the four MAS digital-bank licensees. It operates under a standard bank licence via Standard Chartered and FairPrice, and its products are built for individual savers, not businesses.

Are Virtual Bank Accounts Safe?

Yes, though "safe" works a little differently depending on which of the three provider types you pick.

GXS and MariBank, as Digital Full Banks, carry SDIC deposit insurance on SGD balances up to SGD 100,000 per depositor, identical protection to a traditional bank account. ANEXT and Green Link, as Digital Wholesale Banks, aren't SDIC members, so that specific compensation scheme doesn't apply. That doesn't mean they're less regulated: they still answer to full MAS banking rules and capital requirements, just not this particular scheme, because it's built for banks serving retail depositors.

Fintech MPI platforms like Statrys sit outside SDIC entirely, for a similar reason: they're not banks. Instead, MAS requires them to hold customer funds with approved financial institutions, kept separate from the company's own operating money. It's a different mechanism from deposit insurance, but it's a regulatory requirement, not a company promise.

That covers the provider's side; for how to lock down your own, see our guide to online banking security.

How to Choose the Right Virtual Bank Account

Start with eligibility, not the feature list. Confirm your company's legal structure and ownership against each provider's actual rules before you get attached to a comparison table. GXS's sole-proprietor restriction and MariBank's no-corporate-shareholder rule quietly rule out more applicants than the marketing pages let on.

From there, work through what your business actually needs. If you'll carry a meaningful balance, SDIC coverage from a Digital Full Bank or traditional bank is worth having. A Digital Wholesale Bank or MPI trades that away, which may be a fair swap if you're optimising for FX cost or multi-currency support instead. If you invoice or pay suppliers outside SGD, GXS and MariBank won't help you at all. ANEXT's four currencies or a multi-currency MPI account will save more on conversion than any interest rate will earn you back. Price out international transfers against your real payment sizes, too: a flat SGD 15 SWIFT fee beats a percentage FX margin on a large transfer and loses to it on a small one.

And check what happens after any promotional period ends: MariBank's SGD 0 overseas transfer fee promotion is currently listed as running until 31 December 2026, so build your workflow around the fee that follows, not the one that's live today.

How to Open a Virtual Bank Account

Opening one is genuinely simple. Most providers run the whole thing online, with no branch visit and no paper forms.

1. Choose a provider based on eligibility and currency needs first, features and rates second.
2. Prepare your documents: ACRA business profile, IDs for directors and shareholders, proof of address, evidence of what the business actually does.
3. Submit your application, verifying your identity through Singpass or Corppass along the way.
4. Wait for approval, longer if your ownership structure is layered.
5. Start using your account.

Online Cross-Border Payment Solution: Statrys

If your business runs on multi-currency payments and cross-border transfers rather than SGD-only day-to-day banking, it's worth comparing Statrys against the four digital banks above directly, not as an afterthought.

Founded in 2020, Statrys is a Major Payment Institution (Licence No. PS20200692), not a bank, serving companies registered in Singapore, Hong Kong, and the British Virgin Islands. As explained above, that means Statrys safeguards customer funds with approved financial institutions under MAS rules rather than carrying SDIC insurance (standard for any MPI, not a Statrys-specific gap).

With a Statrys account, you can hold, send, and receive money in 11 major currencies (SGD, USD, EUR, CNY, GBP, HKD, JPY, AUD, CHF, NZD, CAD), make local payments in seven more, exchange at the mid-market rate plus fees from 0.1%, sync with Xero, send invoices through the built-in tool, and reach a dedicated account manager by phone, email, WhatsApp, or WeChat.