The Chinese company has bid for a digital bank licence in the Asian financial centre and is negotiating a tie-up with an investment group linked to the Lee family, one of the founding families of OCBC Bank, according to the Financial Times.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore is set to issue five virtual banking licences by the end of the year, for which ByteDance will compete with a number of other Asian technology companies including Alibaba's Ant Financial, and smartphone maker Xiaomi.
ByteDance had previously explored applying for a virtual banking licence in Hong Kong, which also opened its banking sector to technology companies in 2019.
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