CIMB Singapore Leads Formation of SME Resilience Circle to Strengthen Business Growth and Sustainability

Initiative unites CIMB Singapore, CrediLinq, KPay and Singlife to enhance SME financing and competitiveness through CIMB FlexiPay

SINGAPORE, Nov. 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- CIMB Singapore has taken the lead in forming the SME Resilience Circle, a collaborative initiative with CrediLinq, KPay and Singlife to boost the resilience, growth, and long-term sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore and across the region. It aims to further include other ecosystem partners to help SMEs address key challenges faced today such as rising costs, digital disruption, and evolving customer behaviour.

Marked by the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed on 19 November 2025 between CIMB Singapore and each partner, the collaboration will enable at least 30,000 existing retailers in their networks to access data-driven, performance-linked financing solutions.

At the heart of this collaboration is CIMB FlexiPay, an innovative "pay-as-you-earn" loan launched in August 2025 to offer SMEs smarter and more flexible access to working capital. Repayments* are automatically linked to a business' daily revenue, allowing companies to pay only when they earn, and nothing on days when they do not. Businesses pay a single upfront fee, with no interest, prepayment penalties, or late fees, through a fully digital process.

"CIMB Singapore is proud to lead the SME Resilience Circle as part of our continued commitment to advance customers and society. Through financial solutions like CIMB FlexiPay, we aim to make it simpler and faster for SMEs to manage their cashflow and reinvest in growth, supporting not just business continuity, but competitiveness for the future," said Benjamin Tan, Head of Commercial & Transaction Banking, CIMB Singapore.

"Through this partnership with CIMB Singapore, we're expanding access to innovative financing solutions such as CIMB FlexiPay for our client base. By combining CrediLinq's AI-powered technology and credit underwriting with CIMB Singapore's trusted financial ecosystem, we aim to make working capital more accessible, transparent, and responsive to how businesses actually perform," said Vikram Kotibhaskar, Co-founder, CrediLinq.

"Thousands of SME businesses rely on daily transactions to sustain their operations, with cashflow being absolutely critical to their success. Through our collaboration with CIMB Singapore, KPay seamlessly connects payment data with financing solutions, making credit fairer and more inclusive for merchants. Beyond payments and transaction management, we are now empowering our merchants' growth by providing access to truly flexible financing options," said Christopher Yu, President & Chief Financial Officer, KPay.

"SME resilience is more than financing. It's about building the confidence to take risks, grow sustainably, and safeguard what matters. Singlife is proud to partner with CIMB Singapore to support a more holistic ecosystem for business continuity and protection. When SMEs are financially secure and supported, the entire economy becomes stronger," said Sandeep Nair, Head of Sales, Singlife.

For more information, visit CIMB FlexiPay.

Terms & Conditions apply.

*Repayments are automatically deducted from the daily deposits based on the selected holdback rate which is the percentage of the business' daily revenue that will go towards repaying CIMB FlexiPay.

Disclaimer:

Deposit Insurance Scheme
Singapore dollar deposits of non-bank depositors are insured by the Singapore Deposit Insurance Corporation, for up to S$100,000 in aggregate per depositor per Scheme member by law. Foreign currency deposits, dual currency investments, structured deposits and other investment products are not insured. 

About CIMB

CIMB is one of ASEAN's leading banking groups and Malaysia's second largest financial services provider, by assets. Listed on Bursa Malaysia via CIMB Group Holdings Berhad, it had a market capitalisation of approximately RM75.2 billion as at 31 March 2025. It offers consumer banking, commercial banking, wholesale banking, transaction banking, Islamic banking and asset management products and services. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, the Group is present across ASEAN in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Philippines. Singapore is one of its key markets with approximately 1,000 employees serving clients across consumer, commercial, wholesale and transaction banking products and services.

Beyond ASEAN, the Group has market presence in China, Hong Kong SAR and the UK. CIMB has one of the most extensive retail branch networks in ASEAN with 592 branches and over 33,000 employees as at 31 March 2025. CIMB's investment banking arm is one of the largest Asia Pacific-based investment banks, which together with its award-winning treasury & markets and corporate banking units comprise the Group's leading wholesale banking franchise. CIMB is also the 92.5% shareholder of Bank CIMB Niaga in Indonesia, and 94.8% shareholder of CIMB Thai in Thailand.

Sustainability is a core pillar of CIMB's Forward30 strategy and 2030 roadmap. The Group is guided by its Green, Social, Sustainable Impact Products and Services ("GSSIPS") framework, an internal taxonomy designed to deliver impactful sustainable finance. Since launching its sustainable finance framework in 2021, CIMB has progressively raised its ambitions, increasing its initial RM30 billion target to RM100 billion for 2021–2024. The Group now targets RM300 billion in sustainable finance by 2030, reinforcing its commitment to enabling a lower-carbon and more inclusive economy across the region.

About CrediLinq

CrediLinq is a technology infrastructure company with a proprietary Credit-as-a-Service stack. Their API-centric approach enables banks and B2B platforms to build financial products for merchants, enabling the financial empowerment of underserved digital native SMEs to build, grow and scale their business.

What sets CrediLinq apart is embedding lending solutions within these platforms and harnessing the platform's real-time alternative data, to offer business owners swift access to funding through AI-driven credit decisioning and agentic workflows. This empowers SMEs to manage cash flow by accessing seamless, flexible and transparent lending options.

Through CrediLinq's sister company, AsiaLinq Investments, the Group holds a Capital Markets Services License under the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), enabling it to raise and deploy institutional capital to support SME growth. Its investors include OM/VC (formerly Vectr Fintech), MS&AD Ventures, Citi North America, 500 Global,1982 VC, Big Sky Capital and Epic Angels. The company is ISO 27001 certified for information security management and is a member of the Singapore Fintech Association.  CrediLinq has also been recognized by CB Insights as one of the Top 100 fintech companies worldwide in its 2025 edition.

For more details, visit: https://credilinq.ai.

About KPay

KPay Group ("KPay") is a leading fintech company committed to empowering businesses of all sizes through simple, smart, seamless, and secure technology solutions. Serving more than 72,000 merchants across Australia, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, and Singapore, KPay helps unlock growth potential by building a one-stop platform for financial management, business operations, and digital transformation. In 2024, KPay raised a record-breaking USD 55 million in its Series A funding round—the largest globally in the payments sector that year. The company has since been recognized as PayTech of the Year at the Asia FinTech Awards, selected on the Forbes Asia's 100 to Watch list in 2025 and ranked among the Singapore's Top FinTech Companies 2026 list curated by Tech in Asia and Statista.

About Singlife

Singlife is a leading homegrown financial services company that offers consumers a better way to financial freedom. We are headquartered in Singapore with a presence in the Philippines.  

Singlife meets diverse customer needs by offering a comprehensive suite of insurance products, including life and health, general insurance and investments, employee benefits and financial advisory solutions.  

We achieve this through a differentiated, open-architecture distribution model and Singapore's largest network of financial advisers.   

A pioneer in the digital insurtech space, we offer digital solutions accessible through the Singlife App and GROW with Singlife, an investment platform.  

We are a key player in the employee benefits solutions space and are the exclusive insurance provider for the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs and Public Officers Group Insurance Scheme. We're also one of three government-approved long-term care insurance providers in Singapore.  

We take our commitment to achieving Net Zero seriously and are an official signatory of the United Nations Principles for Sustainable Insurance and the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment.  

Singlife was formed from the merger of Aviva Singapore and Singlife, originally an insurtech start up, in January 2022. Singlife is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumitomo Life, who acquired Singlife in 2024. We have over S$16 billion in assets as of 31 December 2024 and are rated "A" and "Baa1" by Fitch and Moody's respectively.  

Sumitomo Life was established in 1907 and is one of Japan's largest life insurance companies, with over US$300 billion in assets as of 31 March 2025. 

SOURCE CIMB Singapore