Digital Economy
Common platform for multiple central bank digital currencies (multi-CBDCs) for international settlements – Project Dunbar
24 March 2022
MAS collaborated with the BISIH Singapore Centre, the Reserve Bank of Australia, BNM, and the South African Reserve Bank to explore how a common platform for multi-CBDCs could enable cheaper, faster and safer cross-border payments. The development of two prototypes had demonstrated the technical viability of shared multi-CBDC platforms for international settlements.
Potential uses of a purpose-bound digital Singapore Dollar (SGD)
31 October 2022
MAS released a report detailing potential uses of a purpose-bound digital SGD and the supporting infrastructure required. This marked the successful completion of Phase 1 of Project Orchid, which explored the concept of purpose-bound money (PBM). PBM enables senders to specify conditions, such as validity period and types of shops, when making transfers in digital SGD. MAS, together with government agencies and industry players, initiated trials to test this concept.
Project Guardian: First industry pilot for digital asset and decentralised finance (DeFi) goes live
2 November 2022
MAS announced that the first industry pilot under Project Guardian had completed its first live trades. A live cross-currency transaction involving tokenised Japanese Yen and SGD deposits was successfully conducted. In addition, a simulated exercise was performed involving the buying and selling of tokenised government bonds. More industry pilots have been launched to test the application of asset tokenisation and DeFi across a broader range of use cases in the financial sector.
Launch of eGuarantee@Gov
2 November 2022
MAS and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) launched eGuarantee@Gov, a simple and secure digital process for businesses and individuals to provide a banker’s guarantee or insurance bond to government agencies within a day. Jointly developed with The Association of Banks in Singapore, and in consultation with the General Insurance Association of Singapore, eGuarantee@Gov facilitates greater efficiency in processing guarantees for both financial institutions and their customers.
MAS launched expanded initiative to advance cross-border connectivity in wholesale CBDC
3 November 2022
MAS launched Ubin+, an expanded collaboration with international partners on cross-border foreign exchange settlement using wholesale CBDC. Ubin+ would strengthen Singapore’s capabilities to use digital currency-based infrastructure for cross-border transactions. The initiative built on the foundation started with Project Ubin (2016-2020) and learnings from MAS’ participation in Project Dunbar.
Collaboration between MAS and the New York Fed to explore potential enhancements to cross-border transactions using wholesale CBDCs
11 November 2022
MAS and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s New York Innovation Center announced Project Cedar Phase II x Ubin+, a joint experiment to investigate how wholesale CBDCs could improve the efficiency of cross-border wholesale payments involving multiple currencies. The experiment would enhance designs for atomic settlement of cross-border cross-currency transactions, leveraging wholesale CBDCs as a settlement asset.