The Singapore Monetary Authority, the country’s central bank and a major financial regulator, has issued a challenge to fintech businesses to propose solutions for a central bank digital currency or CBDC.
The central bank of Singapore launched a global challenge on Monday to find new retail CBDC solutions that improve payment efficiency and promote financial inclusion.
The MAS plans to award each of the three challenge winners 50,000 Singapore dollars, or $37,000 USD at the time of publication, as part of the project.
In order to support the quick development of digital currency solutions, they will also provide professional mentorship to 15 finalists.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and other key global financial organizations are supporting Singapore’s CBDC challenge.
The API Exchange and Singapore-based blockchain accelerator Tribe Accelerator are managing the program, which is supported by industry companies such as payment giant MasterCard, Amazon Web Services, R3, Hyperledger, and the Mojaloop Foundation.
The CBDC competition is open to global fintech companies and institutions through July 23, according to the release.
Sopnendu Mohanty, the MAS’s top fintech officer, stated that the project aims to gather industry solutions for a variety of legislative and technical concerns connected to CBDC development.
“MAS hopes to encourage innovator communities worldwide to develop and showcase solutions that can maximise the potential of CBDC to deliver efficiencies to payment services, improve financial inclusion, consistent with central banks’ core mandate of monetary stability,” the executives noted.
Singapore has established itself as a prominent global actor in the development of digital currencies, vigorously investigating both CBDC and the crypto business.
The country has been considering a wholesale CBDC, with the MAS stating last year that there was no demand for a retail CBDC because Singapore’s payment system infrastructure currently allows for quick and inexpensive transactions.
After launching a dedicated crypto exchange section last year, Singapore’s banking giant DBS Private Bank, one of Asia‘s largest wealth managers outside of China, announced its own crypto trust solution in May 2021.
