You want my bank details. I want to know who you are first.
The digital economy has made doing business remarkably convenient.
Today, an opportunity may begin with nothing more than an email inviting you to join a new online marketplace. The proposition can be attractive: list your expertise, set your own rates, choose your availability, receive bookings and let the platform handle the payments.
There may even be no upfront fee.
For an independent professional or small-business owner, that sounds like an opportunity worth exploring.
Then comes the onboarding process.
Tell us about yourself. Create your profile. Provide your business information. Verify your identity.
Connect your bank account.
That is the point at which I think every business owner should stop for a moment.
Not because requesting banking information is automatically suspicious. If a legitimate marketplace is going to pay me, it obviously needs a legitimate way to do so.
I would stop because before allowing another business into my financial affairs, I want an answer to an extraordinarily simple question:
Who exactly am I doing business with?
Not, “Is this a scam?”
Not, “Are these people dishonest?”
Those are conclusions that require evidence.
My question comes before all of that.
Who is my legal counterparty, and can I independently verify that it exists?
The Verification Should Work Both Ways
There is a curious imbalance in the way we have learnt to interact with online platforms.
They verify us.
We provide our full names, telephone numbers, addresses, business-registration information and identity documents. Financial platforms may require tax information, banking details and information about the beneficial owners of a business.
We have largely accepted this as part of modern commerce.
Fair enough.
But while the platform is busy verifying me, how many small-business owners remember that we are entitled to verify the platform too?
If you need to know who I am before allowing me into your marketplace, surely I am entitled to know who operates that marketplace before allowing it access to my business.
What is the legal entity?
Where is it registered?
What is its registration number?
What is its registered business address?
Who am I contracting with?
A website is not a legal entity.
Neither is a logo, an email address, a social-media account or a professionally designed onboarding page.
Even beautifully drafted terms and conditions do not establish corporate identity.
All these things may contribute towards credibility.
None replaces independent verification.
Follow the Money
This becomes considerably more important when the platform wants to do more than advertise my services.
Suppose I offer an experience or professional service for S$1,000.
A customer discovers me through a marketplace and makes a booking.
Instead of paying me directly, the customer pays through the platform. The platform, or a payment provider working with it, collects the money and subsequently pays me.
That can be an entirely legitimate marketplace arrangement.
But notice what has changed.
The platform is no longer merely introducing me to a customer.
It has inserted itself into the financial relationship between my customer and me.
Depending on the contractual arrangement, once the customer has validly paid the intermediary, the customer’s obligation to me may already have been fulfilled.
Yet the money has not necessarily reached my bank account.
My exposure has shifted.
Instead of worrying about whether my customer will pay me, I am now depending upon an intermediary to remit money collected in connection with my work.
That is counterparty risk.
Suppose something happens between payment and payout.
The payout is delayed.
A hold is imposed.
A dispute arises.
The intermediary encounters financial difficulty.
Or, in the worst-case scenario, the business ceases operating while money remains outstanding.
Who owes me then?
Against which company do I have a claim?
Where is that company registered?
Which jurisdiction governs the dispute?
And if I never properly established the identity of my counterparty in the first place, how exactly do I enforce my rights?
Suddenly, knowing who sits behind the website becomes much more important than how professional the website looks.
“Secure Payments” Is a Claim, Not an Explanation
We encounter reassuring words constantly online.
Secure. Trusted. Verified. Protected. Transparent.
There is nothing wrong with these words when they accurately describe a service.
But they are not answers.
Tell me that payouts are secure and my next question is:
Who processes them?
When I enter my banking information, am I providing it directly to an identifiable payment service provider through its own secure onboarding system, or am I providing it to the marketplace itself?
Who receives the customer’s money?
When does my entitlement become payable?
What deductions can be made?
Under what circumstances can my payout be withheld?
What happens during a refund or chargeback?
And what happens to money owed to me if the platform itself gets into difficulty?
These aren’t accusations.
They are ordinary commercial questions.
A credible financial arrangement should become clearer under scrutiny, not more mysterious.
Three Numbers Every Seller Should Understand
Suppose I decide my service is worth S$300.
There are three numbers I want to know:
What does my customer pay?
What does the platform keep?
What reaches my bank account?
Perhaps the platform adds a service fee to the customer’s bill.
Perhaps it deducts a commission from my S$300.
Perhaps it charges both sides.
Any of these could be legitimate commercial models.
Tell me which one applies.
“Free to list” does not necessarily mean “free to transact”.
A marketplace needs a business model. I have absolutely no objection to another business earning money when it creates genuine value for mine.
But if I am entering a commercial relationship, I want to understand what that value costs me.
Singaporeans Should Also Ask Who Ultimately Benefits
There is another dimension to this conversation that I think Singaporeans should pay attention to.
Singapore has spent decades developing people with valuable knowledge, skills, professional qualifications and specialised expertise.
Our guides know our streets and communities.
Our craftspeople understand their traditions.
Our artists create.
Our cooks feed people.
Our researchers investigate.
Our heritage practitioners preserve knowledge.
Our small businesses take risks, build reputations and develop products from years of experience.
Increasingly, digital platforms realise that all this local expertise can be aggregated into a marketplace.
That can be a very good thing.
A well-run platform can connect Singapore talent with international customers, reduce administrative friction and create opportunities that individual operators could struggle to reach alone.
But Singaporeans should not confuse convenience with ownership.
Imagine an external or foreign-operated platform arrives with a very simple proposition:
Give us your experiences.
Give us your availability.
Give us your photographs.
Give us your pricing.
Give us access to your customers.
Let us process the booking.
Let us collect the money.
Then we will pay you.
Individually, each part can be perfectly legitimate.
Collectively, however, we should recognise what is potentially being created.
The platform may own very little of the actual product.
The Singaporean provides the knowledge.
The Singaporean develops the experience.
The Singaporean performs the work.
The Singaporean builds the relationship with the visitor.
The Singaporean bears the reputational consequences when the experience succeeds or fails.
Yet the intermediary can potentially control discovery, booking, customer access and the movement of money.
That deserves careful thought.
Do Not Give Away the Marketplace You Created
This isn’t an argument against foreign businesses.
Singapore itself succeeds because we are connected to the world.
Foreign investment, international companies, visitors and global commerce are integral to our economy.
Nor should Singaporeans expect protection from competition simply because we are Singaporean.
My concern is something different.
We should be careful not to surrender control over locally created value simply because someone has built a convenient interface around it.
If an intermediary genuinely brings customers that local businesses could not economically acquire themselves, provides useful technology, assumes meaningful commercial risk and charges a reasonable fee for doing so, there can be a healthy exchange of value.
But consider the opposite scenario.
Singaporeans provide the talent.
Singaporeans provide the products.
Singaporeans provide the experiences.
Singaporeans perform the work.
The intermediary controls the customer acquisition, booking infrastructure and payment channel.
At that point we should ask:
Who has actually built the valuable asset?
The platform?
Or the people whose expertise fills it?
There is a danger in allowing an intermediary to become the gatekeeper to a market that it did not create simply because it has successfully aggregated the people who did.
Over time, enough concentration could give a platform significant leverage over pricing, customer access and supplier terms.
That is why small businesses should think beyond today’s booking.
What relationship are we helping to build for tomorrow?
The Worst Time to Discover Counterparty Risk
There is also a practical financial reason for thinking about this early.
Imagine completing the work first.
You prepare.
You travel.
You purchase materials.
You reserve the time.
You reject another booking because the date is already committed.
Then you deliver the service.
Your customer is satisfied.
Your work is finished.
Only then does a problem emerge with the payout.
At that point, the platform isn’t holding some abstract number on a computer screen.
It is potentially holding the proceeds of your completed labour.
The hours have already been spent.
The expenses have already been incurred.
The opportunity cost has already been suffered.
The work cannot be taken back.
That is why payout risk deserves serious attention before accepting the booking, not after completing it.
For independent professionals, these earnings represent real human effort.
They come from our time, knowledge and, sometimes quite literally, our sweat.
A compensation clause after something goes wrong is not necessarily equivalent to receiving the money you legitimately earned when it was due.
Nor should a beautifully written set of contractual remedies make us indifferent to the identity and financial reliability of the party expected to pay us.
The easiest commercial dispute to survive is sometimes the one you never allowed yourself to enter.
A Bank Account Request Is Not Automatically Suspicious
This distinction remains important.
A legitimate marketplace asking for bank details for legitimate payouts is not, by itself, evidence of fraud or money-mule activity.
Established marketplaces routinely require payout information.
Context matters.
There is an enormous difference between:
Documented customer transaction → identifiable payment provider → payment for a genuine service → my business bank account
and:
Unknown third party → unexplained funds → my bank account → instructions to transfer the money somewhere else.
If I were ever asked to receive funds from unrelated third parties and subsequently transfer those funds elsewhere, I would stop immediately and establish exactly what I was being asked to participate in.
My business bank account should never become somebody else’s unexplained payment-routing mechanism.
But I don’t need evidence of criminal activity before deciding not to enter a commercial relationship.
Sometimes:
“I cannot satisfactorily establish who I am dealing with.”
is sufficient reason to wait.
That is not an accusation.
It is a risk decision.
Due Diligence Is Normal Business
There is a dangerous tendency in online discussions to jump from unanswered questions to accusations.
I cannot find something, therefore it doesn’t exist.
I cannot verify somebody, therefore that person must be dishonest.
Something feels unusual, therefore it must be a scam.
That is not evidence-based thinking.
If something cannot presently be verified, the correct conclusion is simply:
It remains unverified.
Then investigate further.
Perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Good.
Provide the information. Let it be independently checked. Resolve the uncertainty.
Due diligence is not about beginning with the assumption that somebody is dishonest.
It is about refusing to begin with the assumption that everybody is trustworthy.
Ask the Boring Questions
Before allowing an unfamiliar platform to handle my business information, customers or money, I want answers to some very boring questions.
What is your full legal entity name?
What is your registration number?
Where are you registered?
Who owns and operates the platform?
Who processes the payments?
How does my customer’s money move from checkout to my bank account?
What does the customer pay?
What do you keep?
What do I receive?
When do I receive it?
Under what circumstances can my money be withheld?
What happens if your business ceases operating while money is owed to me?
And perhaps one more question that Singaporean small-business owners should increasingly ask:
Are you helping me reach a market, or am I helping you gain control over mine?
There is an important difference.
Trust Comes After Verification
I am not against new platforms.
Every established company was new once.
Nor am I against foreign companies entering Singapore and creating new commercial opportunities. Competition, investment and international connections are part of Singapore’s success.
But openness does not require naivety.
We should welcome genuine value while remaining conscious of the value we ourselves bring to the table.
Our knowledge has value.
Our reputation has value.
Our customer relationships have value.
Our intellectual property has value.
Our labour has value.
And our financial information deserves protection.
The more control an intermediary wants over those things, the more verification I require before giving it that control.
So when somebody asks me to upload business documents, verify my identity, connect my bank account or allow them to collect money associated with my work, I will ask one very boring question first:
Who am I actually doing business with?
If the answer can be independently verified, we can continue the conversation.
If it cannot, I can wait.
There will always be another opportunity.
But once the work has been performed, the knowledge transferred, the customer relationship surrendered and the money collected by somebody else, it may be considerably harder to recover what has already been given away.
Trust should not begin when I give you my bank details. Trust should be established before you ask for them.