Singapore’s fintech funding rebound: choose the right fundraising peers
H1 2026 data and the different business models behind Airwallex’s Series H and dtcpay’s Series A show how founders can choose more relevant fundraising comparisons.
Singapore fintech founders need a closer comparison than the market’s total investment when assessing their fundraising prospects. The first-half 2026 figures published by KPMG on 27 August show how a large late-stage transaction can lift the aggregate. Finding a useful fundraising benchmark requires looking at the businesses behind it.
The useful question is which completed financings resemble the company seeking capital. That requires separating investment value from deal count, matching financing type and stage, and distinguishing a company’s geographic classification from where it intends to spend the money. Two historical payments financings illustrate these differences, while leaving the probability of fundraising success unanswered.
A rebound dominated by one transaction
KPMG’s Singapore release records approximately US$411 million across 27 deals in Q2 2026, following about US$88 million across 26 deals in Q1. A US$320 million June payments round dominated the increase. The full half recorded over US$499 million across 53 deals, compared with roughly US$1.45 billion across 97 deals in H1 2025.
Using the rounded quarterly inputs, SEA Connect calculates that the large round represented about 78% of Q2 investment. Removing it from the total leaves approximately US$91 million across 26 other deals, close to Q1’s US$88 million across 26 deals. This subtraction describes concentration; it does not estimate what the market would have done without the transaction.
Higher total value measures the amount invested; transaction count measures how many deals were recorded. The quarterly comparison therefore reveals a surge in value with little change in deal count. A founder looking for relevant financing examples needs to go further into the types of businesses and rounds that make up those totals.
Match the business as well as the financing stage
The original KPMG report identifies the US$320 million transaction as Airwallex’s Singapore-classified payments Series H. In its 25 June announcement, Airwallex said returning investor Addition led the round. This provides a named financing to examine rather than an anonymous large number in a quarterly total.
The Series H label and returning lead investor identify an established financing history. A founder approaching institutional investors for the first time is asking them to evaluate a business at a different point in its development. That difference makes stage an essential first filter when comparing transactions, before considering whether the companies sell similar services.
A smaller historical example provides a useful counterpoint. A 17 March announcement hosted by Vertex Ventures reported that Singapore-headquartered dtcpay had raised US$10 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India. The smaller financing shows that the half contained opportunities beyond the transaction dominating the aggregate.
The businesses also offer different product mixes. In its funding announcement, Airwallex describes a global payments and financial platform spanning payment acceptance, billing, global accounts, corporate cards and spend management. Its stated expansion combines new products with infrastructure and entry into additional markets. That is a platform-wide financing context, rather than funding for a single payment function.
The Vertex-hosted announcement describes dtcpay as connecting digital assets with traditional finance: customers can accept, hold and transact in stablecoins, while its swap engine supports settlement between stablecoins and conventional currencies. This gives a founder building a similar conversion or settlement service a more specific product comparison than the broad label “payments company”.
These descriptions help identify what a comparable business does for customers. A founder building stablecoin settlement services could examine dtcpay’s Series A as an example of financing a related function. A business assembling several financial products for international customers could examine Airwallex’s platform scope, while separating that product comparison from the much later financing stage. The useful peer may resemble a company on one dimension and differ on another.
Neither example supplies a ready-made valuation benchmark. Product scope and financing stage first help define which transactions belong in a comparison; deal terms and company-specific evidence would then be needed to assess pricing. The practical contribution of the two announcements is to make that selection more precise, rather than to derive a funding target from the size of either round.
Compare intended markets, not just headquarters
Airwallex describes itself as co-headquartered in Singapore and San Francisco, with funding intended for product and international infrastructure expansion. The Vertex-hosted announcement describes Singapore-headquartered dtcpay’s plans to strengthen products and infrastructure and accelerate European market entry. Company location therefore differs from the market the financing is intended to serve. For a founder choosing peers, a Singapore classification should be paired with a comparison of target customers and expansion plans; it is not a measure of domestic expenditure.
Completed deals leave the applicant pool unseen
The report methodology says its PitchBook-based dataset covers completed venture capital, including corporate venture capital, private equity and merger-and-acquisition transactions, using information available at 30 June 2026. Family-and-friends, incubator and accelerator funding rounds are excluded. This is a broader investment measure than a count of venture rounds available to startups.
A founder raising equity should therefore avoid using an acquisition or a different financing type as an interchangeable peer. The question is whether the transaction addresses a comparable capital need at a comparable business stage. Combining unlike transactions can describe overall financial activity while obscuring the subset relevant to the reader’s own fundraising decision.
More fundamentally, completed deals do not provide the number of companies that sought money, withdrew or failed to close. Without that applicant denominator, a deal count cannot yield a fundraising success rate. The same number of completed transactions could coexist with different numbers of applicants. These sources provide no basis for choosing between those possibilities or estimating an individual founder’s odds.
The evidence has clear limits. KPMG describes an estimated dataset that may be revised, with some deal values unavailable. Airwallex is the issuer and Vertex is the investor hosting dtcpay’s announcement; their examples are not a representative sample. dtcpay’s membership in the KPMG dataset has not been established, so its round is not added to those totals. This is a historical H1 2026 comparison, not an assessment of October fundraising conditions.
For founders, the resulting comparison starts with financing type and stage, then tests product scope and intended market. The quarterly aggregate identifies a concentration of capital; the company announcements help explain why the transactions within a sector can serve different businesses. Keeping those questions separate produces a more useful peer group than treating every Singapore payments financing as the same signal.
Sources: KPMG Singapore release, 27 August 2026; KPMG Pulse of Fintech H1 2026, transaction table and methodology; Airwallex funding announcement, 25 June 2026; dtcpay funding announcement hosted by Vertex Ventures, 17 March 2026.
