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The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) – the island city-state’s central bank – has been reported to be working to modernize the global economy by utilizing central bank digital currencies. That said, MAS has recently revealed 15 firms that they shortlisted in an effort to put up its own CBDC.
Global CBDC Challenge
In an announcement published by the Singaporean central bank, the shortlisted companies include four from the United States, six from Singapore, and one each from Switzerland, Germany, France, Australia, and Barbados. Further, it was learned that only three of these firms will be chosen to officially roll out the country’s retail CBDC.
The 15 are…
The companies that were seen potential are Criteo (France), Soramitsu (Switzerland), Giesecke+Devrient advance52 GmbH (Germany), Bitt (Barbados), ANZ Banking Group Limited (Australia), Extolabs LLC, cLabs Inc., Consensys, and IBM from the US. As for the Singapore-based shortlisted firms these are HSBC Bank Limited and HSBC Holdings plc, IOG Singapore Pte Ltd., Xfers Pte., Standard Chartered Bank, IDEMIA, and Citibank N.A.
Also, this so-called Global CBDC Challenge will be supported by Amazon Web Services, Partior, R3, Mastercard, and open-source software solutions, Mojaloop Foundation, and Hyperledger as these will be managed by both APIX and Tribe Accelerator.
In a previous press release, the finalists are said to be mentored by the MAS as they will be granted access to the API Exchange (APIX) Digital Currency Sandbox for quicker prototyping of digital currency solutions. Further, it was stated that the Sandbox will be offering a comprehensive test and development platform that includes core-banking APIs from APIX, payment APIs coming from Mojaloop Foundation, digital currency APIs from Mastercard, Partior, and R3, and over a hundred APIs that are being provided through the APIX marketplace. In line with this, the initiative to develop Singapore’s retail CBDC will be accompanied by a cash prize of 50,000 Singapore dollars ($37,000).
IBM also included
A notable finalist to this competition is the 110-year-old tech firm IBM. It was stated that the company is aiming to put up a strong CBDC infrastructure that can maintain security minus the hindrance in performance.
Additionally, the company highlighted that the solution seeks to build a resilient and strong retail CBDC infrastructure to handle a huge number of transactions, while at the same time maintaining the operation performance and ensuring security to a great extent via a seron trust system that according to IBM is flexible and easy to include new capabilities without incurring additional costs and changes to existing architecture and design.