Singapore Ponders CBDC Release with Shortlist of Companies

15 companies have been shortlisted by the monetary authority of Singapore (MAS) as finalists for the development of a Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) for the nation.

Among the group of finalists are financial institutions, FinTechs and Technology solution providers from around the world.

The MAS hopes the collaboration will accelerate the Global CBDC Challenge before providing solutions to judges at Singapore’s FinTech Festival. The CBDC challenge attracted more than 300 subscribers from around the world, with more than 50% of those subscribers from Asia.

Those who subscribed by sending in solutions were required to address a dozen CBDC instruments, infrastructure and distribution-related problems. Additionally, topics included interoperability and programmability.

CBDC Proposals From the final 15

The MAS adds that “The proposals from the finalists sought to address multiple problem statements through a variety of technology approaches including hardware wallets, digital identity, and asset tokenization solutions.”

The final 15 was then selected by an independent group of policy and technical experts, academics, and senior representatives from intergovernmental organization partners who served as judges for the competition. This ensures a very thorough and impartial judgement.

The 15 finalists are; ANZ Banking Group Limited, Bitt, Citibank N.A., Singapore, cLabs Inc., Consensys, Extolabs LLC, Giesecke+Devrient advance52 GmbH, HSBC Bank (Singapore) Limited and HSBC Holdings plc, IBM, IDEMIA, Criteo, IOG Singapore Pte Ltd., Soramitsu, Standard Chartered Bank and Xfers Pte. Ltd.

Acceleration phase supported by the accelerator tribe

Six of the finalists are from Singapore, while the others coming from the United States, Germany, Barbados, and some other nations. The next run will be an acceleration phase supported by the accelerator tribe. This will run for 8weeks it’s to refine further and better develop their solutions with experts as mentors.

Masterclasses and networking sessions with industry experts will be conducted and provide the group access to the (APPLICATION PROGRAM INTERPHASE) API Exchange Digital Currency Sandbox, test run its features. At the Global CBDC Global challenge demo day, all groups will provide their solutions with the top 3 selected and a $50,000 award price. Each of this three will also be funded with up to $200,000 for future applications. The solutions will also be published in a post-event report.

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer MAS, said that “the quality of proposals received from the global innovation community was impressive. There was a healthy diversity of solution approaches across the different problem statement categories. We look forward to showcasing the shortlisted solutions at the Singapore FinTech Festival.”