As Southeast Asia’s digital economy expands, fintech platforms, digital banks, payment providers and cross-border businesses are facing greater pressure to scale without compromising trust. Growth across multiple markets now means navigating different regulatory requirements, onboarding standards, anti-money laundering obligations and fraud risks while still delivering seamless customer experiences. 

This is creating stronger demand for compliance technology across the region, with Singapore emerging as a centre for regtech innovation. The Singapore FinTech Association’s dedicated RegTech Subcommittee and its 2025 RegTech Pitch Book reflect the sector’s growing importance within the country’s broader fintech ecosystem. Here are five Singapore-based startups helping digital businesses scale with trust, security and regulatory confidence.

Why digital identity is becoming Southeast Asia’s next trust infrastructure battleground

ADVANCE.AI

ADVANCE.AI has become one of Southeast Asia’s leading providers of digital identity and risk management solutions. The company offers a broad range of products covering digital identity verification, Know Your Customer (KYC), Know Your Business (KYB), anti-money laundering (AML) screening and fraud prevention. 

The most critical challenge digital businesses need to tackle today is identity verification. Financial institutions, lending platforms, digital banks and e-commerce companies need to be able to verify users quickly while simultaneously preventing identity fraud and ensuring regulatory compliance. Delays during the onboarding process often result in customer drop-offs. In addition, weak verification processes can also expose businesses to significant fraud risks.

ADVANCE.AI addresses these challenges by automating large portions of the identity verification process. Businesses can onboard customers more efficiently while maintaining compliance standards through AI-powered verification and risk assessment tools. The services that ADVANCE.AI provides are particularly relevant for organisations operating across multiple Southeast Asian markets where identity verification requirements may differ between each jurisdiction.

Tookitaki

For financial institutions worldwide, anti-money laundering remains one of the most significant compliance priorities. Regulatory scrutiny continues to increase as financial crime becomes more sophisticated and increasingly cross-border in its nature. Singapore-based Tookitaki focuses on helping banks, fintech companies and financial institutions strengthen AML monitoring and strengthen their financial crime prevention capabilities. 

The company develops technology designed to identify suspicious activity, improve transaction monitoring and reduce false positives that often overwhelm compliance teams. Traditional AML systems frequently generate large volumes of alerts that require manual investigation. This results in operational inefficiencies and an increase in compliance costs. Tookitaki seeks to improve this process through advanced monitoring technologies that help institutions identify genuinely suspicious behaviour more accurately.

As digital payments continue to grow throughout Southeast Asia, transaction volumes are increasing substantially. This creates greater pressure on compliance teams to monitor activity effectively while maintaining operational efficiency. Startups such as Tookitaki demonstrate how regtech can help financial institutions manage growing complexity without proportionally increasing compliance resources.

Silent Eight

Silent Eight develops technology designed to help financial institutions manage sanctions screening, investigations and broader compliance workflows. The company’s solutions use artificial intelligence to support decision-making processes and reduce the operational burden associated with large-scale compliance reviews. Financial institutions routinely screen customers and transactions against sanctions lists and watchlists. While essential, these processes can generate significant numbers of alerts that require investigation. Managing these alerts manually is often time-consuming and resource-intensive.

Silent Eight focuses on helping compliance teams resolve investigations more efficiently while maintaining regulatory standards. By automating aspects of the review process, institutions can improve response times and reduce operational costs. The company highlights a broader trend within regtech, where automation is increasingly being applied not only to customer onboarding but also to ongoing compliance operations that continue long after a customer has been acquired.

SHIELD

Digital fraud continues to evolve as attackers leverage automation, synthetic identities and increasingly sophisticated tactics. SHIELD focuses on helping businesses identify fake accounts, bot attacks, account takeovers and payment fraud. The company provides fraud intelligence tools that allow organisations to detect suspicious behaviour before it results in financial losses or customer harm. 

Fraudsters frequently exploit onboarding systems, promotional campaigns and payment processes to generate illicit gains. SHIELD helps organisations analyse behavioural signals and risk indicators in real time. This enables businesses to identify fraudulent activity without introducing excessive friction for legitimate users.

The company occupies an important position within the broader trust infrastructure stack. While cybersecurity focuses on protecting systems from external threats, fraud intelligence focuses on understanding user behaviour and identifying malicious actors operating within digital ecosystems. As fraud tactics become increasingly sophisticated, platforms capable of balancing security with user experience are likely to become even more valuable.

Regtank

Regtank provides compliance infrastructure tailored to fintech businesses and regulated financial institutions. The company offers solutions covering KYC, KYB, AML screening and risk management workflows. One of the challenges facing startups is the complexity of managing multiple compliance requirements simultaneously. Businesses must often coordinate onboarding processes, customer due diligence, risk scoring and ongoing monitoring while meeting evolving regulatory obligations.

Regtank seeks to simplify these processes through integrated compliance tools that centralise key workflows. This allows businesses to manage regulatory obligations more efficiently without building extensive internal compliance systems from scratch.

The company’s focus reflects a growing trend towards compliance orchestration, where businesses increasingly seek unified platforms capable of managing multiple regulatory processes within a single framework. For many fintech startups, reducing compliance complexity can accelerate product launches, improve operational efficiency and support regional expansion efforts.

Trust is becoming infrastructure

These five startups address different layers of the compliance and trust stack. ADVANCE.AI focuses on digital identity verification and onboarding. Tookitaki specialises in anti-money laundering and financial crime monitoring. Silent Eight supports sanctions screening and compliance investigations. SHIELD tackles fraud detection and account security. Regtank provides an integrated compliance management infrastructure.

Collectively, they illustrate how compliance technology is evolving beyond traditional regulatory requirements. Rather than acting solely as risk management tools, these platforms are increasingly becoming operational infrastructure that enables digital businesses to scale safely. For Southeast Asia’s digital economy, this distinction matters. Growth alone is no longer sufficient. As businesses expand across markets, trust becomes a critical enabler of sustainable growth. The companies that can verify users, prevent fraud and satisfy regulatory expectations efficiently will often be better positioned to enter new markets and serve customers at scale.

Compliance technology will become one of the most important but least visible layers of Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem. The next phase of digital growth will not be defined solely by user acquisition or transaction volumes. It will increasingly be shaped by the infrastructure that allows businesses to build trust, manage risk and scale confidently across a fragmented and complex regulatory landscape.