- The statutory minimum paid-up capital for a Singapore private limited company is S$1, confirmed by ACRA's own share capital guidance.
- The Ministry of Manpower does not publish any paid-up capital requirement for companies sponsoring an Employment Pass. Anyone who tells you there is a fixed figure is guessing.
- Employment Pass approval turns on the candidate's qualifying salary and your COMPASS score, not on a capital number, so treat capital as a credibility signal rather than a qualifying test.
- Increasing paid-up capital later is free at ACRA but costs you corporate secretary time and can stall a live Employment Pass application.
The minimum paid-up capital Singapore law requires for a private limited company is S$1, and that single dollar is where most founders stop reading. It’s the right answer to the wrong question. The statutory floor tells you what ACRA accepts at Singapore company incorporation, and nothing about what the Ministry of Manpower weighs when you sponsor an Employment Pass, or what a bank wants before it opens your account. Founders who file at S$1 and then meet that gap pay twice, once to incorporate and again to fix it.
Planning to hire on an Employment Pass, and quietly worried your S$1 company won’t hold up?
What is the minimum paid-up capital for a Singapore company?
One Singapore dollar. ACRA states it plainly in its guidance on deciding share capital: “your company needs at least $1 in share capital to start”. There is no statutory floor above that figure for a private company limited by shares, which is why Singapore is routinely described as one of the cheapest developed markets in which to form a company.
Three practical points follow from that, and each one catches founders out:
- Your capital doesn’t have to sit in a bank before you file. ACRA notes that share capital can be issued with or without full payment from shareholders, so shares may be fully paid or partially paid.
- Capital is not the same as the government fee. Registration through Bizfile costs S$300, with a further S$15 to apply for the entity name.
- The figure you declare becomes public. It appears on your business profile, which is exactly why banks, landlords and MOM officers can see it.
If you’re still deciding on structure before you get to the capital question, our guide on how to set up a private limited company in Singapore covers the five requirements ACRA checks.
Paid-up capital, issued capital and authorised capital: what’s the difference?
Issued capital is the total value of shares your company has allotted to shareholders. Paid-up capital is the slice of that which shareholders have actually handed over. Authorised capital, the old ceiling on how many shares a company could issue, no longer applies to Singapore companies, so you won’t see it on a modern business profile.
The distinction matters because you can issue S$100,000 of shares and pay up S$10,000 of it. Your profile would then show issued capital of S$100,000 and paid-up capital of S$10,000, and the second number is the one anyone assessing your company will look at. The share class you use is a separate decision, covered in our comparison of preference shares and ordinary shares.
Is there a requirement for how much paid-up capital you need in order to sponsor an employee?
No. The Ministry of Manpower publishes no paid-up capital requirement for companies sponsoring an Employment Pass, and that is worth stating flatly because a great deal of internet advice implies otherwise. MOM’s Employment Pass eligibility criteria turn on two things: the candidate’s qualifying salary and the company’s COMPASS score.
What MOM does ask of the employer is different in kind. Before you submit, your organisation’s turnover information for the past three years must be up to date, and an overseas company with no Singapore registration needs a local sponsor to file on its behalf (MOM, apply for an Employment Pass).
Here are the qualifying salary figures your candidate has to clear.
| Candidate profile | Applications before 1 January 2027 | Applications from 1 January 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Aged 23 or below, most sectors | S$5,600 | S$6,000 |
| Aged 45 and above, most sectors | S$10,700 | S$11,500 |
| Aged 23 or below, financial services | S$6,200 | S$6,600 |
| Aged 45 and above, financial services | S$11,800 | S$12,700 |
Salaries rise progressively with age between those bands. On top of that, your candidate needs 40 points across the six COMPASS criteria, two of which are firm-level: your company’s local PMET share and the nationality mix of your PMET workforce. An employee counts as a PMET at S$3,150 in fixed monthly salary, rising to S$3,300 from 1 September 2026 (MOM, how PMETs are counted under COMPASS).
Be honest with yourself about what capital buys. A higher paid-up capital is not a qualifying criterion and will not rescue an application that fails on salary or COMPASS points. What it does is make the salary commitment look fundable. A company with S$1 in capital declaring it will pay a S$10,700 monthly salary is asking an officer to take the payroll on trust. Our guide on how to get a Singapore Employment Pass walks through the full application.
What are the three capital tiers, and which one applies to you?
Think of capital in three tiers rather than one number. The column that matters most in the table below is “source type”, because it separates what the law demands from what a commercial party prefers. Confusing the two is the most common mistake in the advice you’ll find on this topic.
Note what the middle row does not say. Banks apply their own onboarding criteria and don’t publish a single capital threshold, so any specific figure you read elsewhere is that writer’s anecdote rather than a rule. Ask your chosen bank directly before you file.The bottom row is the one founders should sit with. There’s no number to comply with, so the sensible frame is proportionality: does your declared capital plausibly fund the salary you’re promising for a year? The full cost of registering a Singapore company is a separate budget line from the capital you put in, and the two get muddled constantly.
How much paid-up capital do you actually need? Three worked examples
The local solo founder with no hiring plans
You’re a Singapore citizen consulting through your own company, no staff, and your clients pay by invoice. S$1 does the job, and there’s no compliance reason to go higher. If you want the business profile to look less bare to a prospective client, S$1,000 to S$10,000 is a presentation choice, not a requirement.
The foreign founder relocating on an Employment Pass
You’ll be the company’s first employee, and the company must fund your own qualifying salary. If that salary is S$6,000 a month, your company is committing to S$72,000 of payroll in year one, and declaring S$1 of capital against it is a poor look on a public profile.
Sizing capital in the region of six to 12 months of that committed payroll is a defensible position you can explain if asked. It’s also the scenario where sequencing matters most: incorporate, get the bank account open, fund the capital, then file. Our Singapore incorporation checklist sets out the order.
The foreign parent opening a subsidiary that will sponsor two Employment Passes
Two passes means two qualifying salaries and a COMPASS profile with no local PMETs on day one, which is the hardest starting position under the diversity and local employment criteria. Capital here does double duty: it funds real payroll, and it evidences that the parent has committed money to the Singapore entity rather than registering a shell.
Fund the subsidiary at a level that covers the first year of both salaries plus operating costs. That’s cash you’d have to transfer anyway, so the only real decision is whether it goes in as share capital or as a shareholder loan, which is a tax and accounting question worth asking before you file.
When can you apply for the Employment Pass after incorporating?
As soon as the entity exists and your company records are in order. There’s no waiting period written into the Employment Pass framework, but two things gate you in practice.
First, MOM expects your organisation’s turnover information for the past three years to be updated before submission, which for a brand new company means declaring that it has no trading history yet. Second, if the applying entity isn’t registered in Singapore, you’ll need a local sponsor to submit for you, and MOM flags roughly six weeks of processing for that route.
The practical answer for most founders is that the pass application follows the bank account, not the incorporation, because you want the capital genuinely transferred before anyone assesses the company. That sequence usually adds two to four weeks between filing your company and filing the pass.
What if your shareholder is an overseas company?
Nothing changes in the mechanics. A foreign company can hold 100% of a Singapore private limited company and can subscribe for the shares that make up your paid-up capital, and the S$1 minimum applies exactly as it would to an individual shareholder.
Two things do change in practice. Your corporate service provider will run know-your-customer checks on the parent’s own directors and beneficial owners, which adds time. And the capital has to arrive from the parent’s account, so plan the transfer alongside the incorporation rather than after it. For what the shareholder is entitled to once the shares are issued, see a shareholder’s rights and obligations.
How do you increase your paid-up capital after incorporation?
You allot new shares and tell ACRA. The directors pass a resolution to allot, the shareholder pays for the new shares, and the company files a return of allotment through Bizfile. ACRA charges nothing for the filing, processing is immediate, and for a private company the allotment takes effect once ACRA updates your electronic register of members (ACRA, filing a return of allotment of shares).
So the ACRA cost is zero. The real cost sits elsewhere:
- Corporate secretary time to draft the resolution, update the register and file correctly.
- Bank timing, because the funds need to move before you can honestly describe the shares as paid up.
- Application risk, if you’re doing this while an Employment Pass application is already sitting with MOM and the company profile changes underneath it.
None of that is expensive on its own. It’s simply work you could have avoided by picking the right figure at the point you registered the company with ACRA.
What can go wrong, and what does it cost to fix?
Four failure modes come up repeatedly, and all four are cheaper to prevent than to unwind.
- Capital declared but never transferred. Your profile says S$50,000 and the bank statement says otherwise. This is the serious one, because the company’s records no longer reflect reality and any party relying on that profile has been misled.
- Bank account declined or delayed. The account gates everything downstream, including the capital transfer itself, and a thin company profile is one of the things onboarding teams weigh.
- Capital increased mid-application. Changing the company’s fundamentals while MOM is assessing an application invites questions you’d rather not answer.
- A profile that reads as a shell. No local staff, minimal capital, and a foreign parent is a combination that gets scrutinised, and capital is the easiest of the three to fix in advance.
How Sleek helps you size capital before you file
Most of the pain in this article comes from one place: the person who incorporates your company, the person who files your capital increase, and the person who submits your Employment Pass are usually three different providers who never speak. Sleek runs all three, so the capital figure on your incorporation is set against the hiring plan you actually have rather than a default.
That means one conversation about what you’re committing to in year one, one filing at the right number, and no second round of corporate secretary work three months later when the pass application asks a question your profile can’t answer.
Get your capital right the first time.
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FAQs: Minimum Paid Up Capital in Singapore: How Much You Actually Need
Is there a minimum paid-up capital to register a company in Singapore?
Yes, and it’s S$1. ACRA’s guidance confirms a company needs at least S$1 in share capital to start, and there’s no higher statutory floor for a private company limited by shares. You can declare any amount above that in any currency, though Singapore dollars is the norm.
Do I need a certain paid-up capital to sponsor an Employment Pass?
No. MOM publishes no paid-up capital requirement for sponsoring employers. Approval depends on the candidate clearing the qualifying salary for their age and sector and the application scoring at least 40 COMPASS points, with your company’s local PMET share and workforce diversity feeding into that score.
Does the paid-up capital have to be in the bank before I incorporate?
No. ACRA allows shares to be issued fully paid or partially paid, so the money doesn’t need to be sitting anywhere on the day you file. In practice, you can’t transfer it until the company has a bank account, which is why capital usually lands a few weeks after incorporation.
Can I incorporate with the minimum and increase it later?
Yes, and plenty of companies do. You allot new shares and file a return of allotment with ACRA, which is free and processes immediately. The catch is timing rather than cost, since doing it while a pass or bank application is live creates avoidable questions.
Does higher paid-up capital improve my Employment Pass approval chances?
Not directly, because it isn’t a scored criterion. What it does is make a salary commitment look fundable, which matters when a new company with no trading history is promising five figures a month. Treat it as removing a doubt rather than earning a point.
What happens if I declare capital I never actually transfer?
Your public business profile then overstates the company’s position, which is a genuine problem rather than a technicality. Anyone relying on that profile, including a bank or MOM, has been given a misleading picture. Declare what you’ll actually fund, and fund it.
Do banks require a minimum paid-up capital to open a corporate account?
Banks apply their own onboarding criteria and don’t publish a single capital threshold, so treat any specific figure you read online as one person’s experience. Ask your chosen bank what it expects before you decide your capital, because the answer varies by bank and by your business profile.
