Singapore MAS opens stablecoin law consultation through Oct 16

The Monetary Authority of Singapore has opened a public consultation on draft amendments to the Payment Services Act 2019 that would write its stablecoin rules into law.

This is a consultation, numbered P015-2026, not a finished statute. It opened on September 1, 2026 and comments close on October 16, 2026. For anyone in the business, the headline is what the draft demands of issuers: full reserve backing and no yield.

The two rules that hit the business model

Under the proposal, a MAS-regulated stablecoin issuer would have to hold reserve assets equal to at least 100 percent of tokens in circulation, kept separate from the issuer's own funds and custodied only with licensed financial institutions, and would be barred from paying interest on the tokens. Redemption at par, stress testing, and recovery and wind-down plans round out the core requirements.

In plain terms, MAS wants a stablecoin to behave like fully backed payment money, not a yield product competing with bank deposits, the same tension the New York Fed framed through the monetary trilemma.

What is actually changing

MAS finalized a stablecoin framework back in 2023, but it has sat as policy rather than binding law. This consultation moves it into the Payment Services Act and adds requirements that account for how the market has developed since. The regulator's own framing is that the amendments "will give effect to a stablecoin framework that promotes responsible financial innovation." The scope is narrow: single-currency stablecoins issued in Singapore and pegged to the Singapore dollar or a G10 currency.

The part issuers will read twice

Two proposals reopen questions the 2023 stance kept tight. MAS is proposing to recognize a limited number of foreign-issued stablecoins regulated under a comparable overseas framework, and to allow joint issuance by a Singapore entity and a foreign one. For a global issuer, that is the difference between running a walled Singapore-only token and plugging a Singapore-regulated coin into an international structure. Those details sit in the consultation paper, and they are what the industry will spend the next six weeks lobbying over.

The takeaway

If you issue or plan to issue a stablecoin that touches Singapore, the date that matters is October 16, because after that MAS drafts the actual bill and the window to shape the 100 percent reserve rule, the yield ban, and the foreign-recognition terms closes. Singapore is choosing a fully backed, no-yield model rather than the looser design some markets allow, a deliberate contrast with how the US built its regime under the Treasury's GENIUS Act rules. Send comments to MAS before mid-October, or accept whatever it writes without your input.