The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has chosen 15 participants in the “Global CBDC Challenge” to assist in the development of a retail CBDC. In the end, only three winners will be chosen for deploying a retail CBDC in Singapore.
Six businesses from Singapore, four from the United States, and one each from Australia, Barbados, Germany, France, and Switzerland are among the contenders, according to the MAS. Only three winners will be chosen for deploying a retail CBDC in Singapore.
The initiative allegedly attracted over 300 fintech companies from over 50 nations shortly after the Singaporean central bank announced cash awards for digital money ideas on June 28.
ANZ Banking Group Limited (Australia), Bitt (Barbados), Giesecke+Devrient advance52 GmbH (Germany), Criteo (France), and Soramitsu (Japan) are among the global finalists (Switzerland).
Citibank N.A., HSBC Bank Limited and HSBC Holdings plc, IDEMIA, IOG Singapore Pte Ltd., Standard Chartered Bank, and Xfers Pte Ltd. are among the shortlisted Singaporean consortiums.
cLabs, Inc., Consensys, Extolabs LLC, and IBM are all based in the United States.
This proposal to create a retail CBDC for Singapore will be accompanied by a monetary reward of $50,000 SGD ($37,000 USD).
The 15 finalists will be coached by the MAS and provided access to the APIX Digital Currency Sandbox for rapid development of digital currency solutions, as stated in an earlier statement.
More than 100 APIs relevant to core banking and payments, as well as digital currency APIs from Mastercard, will be available in the sandbox environment.
The finalists will now have the chance to present their CBDC solutions at the Singapore FinTech Festival, which will take place from November 8 to November 12, 2021.
Throughout 2021, the Singaporean government has made pro-crypto actions. The Australian crypto exchange Independent Reserve just received “in-principle approval” from the MAS, allowing it to “operate as a regulated provider for Digital Payment Token (‘DPT’) Services.”
According to reports, Singapore has a long list of 170 crypto exchange applicants, including Binance and Gemini, waiting for license to conduct business there.
