Five licensed digital banks, no new licences in sight
As of 2026, Singapore has five MAS-licensed digital banks operating in the market: Trust Bank, GXS Bank, MariBank, ANEXT Bank, and Green Link Digital Bank. GXS and MariBank hold Digital Full Bank licences, serving both retail and business customers; Trust Bank operates under a full bank licence. MAS has not been issuing new digital bank licences, meaning this group of five represents a settled competitive set rather than an expanding field.
All deposits at these institutions are protected up to S$100,000 under the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation scheme — the same protection level as deposits at the incumbent banks, which removes one of the more common hesitations customers have historically had about digital-only banks.
The product pattern: fee-light by design
A consistent feature across these digital banks' card and account products is the near-absence of the fee structures that legacy banks built their retail businesses around — annual card fees in particular are frequently waived entirely as a standard product feature, not something that requires a retention call. This isn't a promotional gimmick; it reflects a fundamentally lower cost base (no branch network, leaner operations) that lets digital banks compete on structurally lower fees rather than negotiated waivers.
Why this matters even if you never open a digital bank account
The competitive pressure this creates doesn't stay contained to the digital banks' own customer base. Every Singaporean who holds a digital bank account alongside a legacy bank card now has a live, in-hand comparison: one product with no annual fee friction at all, and another that charges a fee unless you actively call in every year to have it waived.
This comparison is quietly resetting expectations. It's a reasonable bet that legacy banks' willingness to waive fees on request — already high, at 70–98% approval rates by some estimates — reflects at least in part a recognition that a rigid, unwaived annual fee is now competing against genuinely free alternatives, not just other legacy banks with the same fee structure.
What this means practically for your own card portfolio
If you're deciding whether a legacy bank's card is worth keeping despite its annual fee, it's worth explicitly comparing it against what a fee-free digital bank alternative offers for the same use case — and using that comparison, if genuine, as part of your case when you call your legacy bank for a waiver. "I'm comparing this against fee-free alternatives" is a legitimate, honest version of the retention trigger phrase that opens the door to the waiver conversation.
The clawbacks.ai approach
Whether your card sits at a legacy bank or you're weighing it against a digital-bank alternative, clawbacks.ai handles the annual waiver conversation so you don't have to weigh "is this fee worth calling about" against your own time every year.