PayPal has expanded its research operations to Singapore, one of the global financial and fintech hubs, culminating in the launch of a new innovation lab in the country and its first outside the United States, according to a PayPal statement.

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The fundamental goal of the lab will be to help foster a new generation of fintech startups not only in the region but also within the PayPal Incubator program. The program acts as a means of instigating and generating profitability for a given startup by providing payment processing and advice. This is accomplished via a connection through top tier incubators, accelerators and VCs.

At the present, OnePay, Prosecure.me, and InvoiceInterchange are currently incubating in Singapore, demonstrating the industry’s commitment to the region itself, which has seen a groundswell of fintech investment in recent years. Singapore is just the second country in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region after India to host an incubator program, marking the significance of the development.

New Developments

For its part, PayPal’s Technology Center in Chennai, India, has been hosting the same program since 2013 – the new lab launch in Singapore will look to capture the same level of success. In Singapore, the lab will also aim to liaison and work with government agencies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), industry associations and institutes of higher learning, whereby garnering innovation, research and development (R&D), and entrepreneurship in Singapore.

First on the list for PayPal’s new lab will be to facilitate a partnership with SMEs in the food amd beverage business, with the main aim of improving productivity – this will be accomplished by embedding digital payments into business operations. The new lab will also be working in tandem with three universities, the National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and the Singapore Management University (SMU).