Singapore’s central bank, IMF and World Bank launch initiative to tackle retail CBDC challenges

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), with the participation of IMF, OECD, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, has launched a competition inviting participants to propose solutions to 12 challenges in the design of retail national digital currencies (CBDCs).

The initiative is supported by Amazon Web Services, Mastercard, Hyperledger, R3, Partior and others.

Participants may come from any fintech firms and financial institutions. Organisers will create a sandbox for testing and developing CBDCs. It will comprise more than 100 API.

Participants will also be able to engage the Hyperledger developer community. In addition, Amazon Web Services will provide 15 finalists with access to the AWS platform and its advertising credits.

Results are expected in November at the fintech festival in Singapore. The three winners will each receive SGD 150,000 (about USD 111,800).

The initiative is aimed at developing tools, infrastructure and a mechanism for distributing national digital currencies.

For example, one of the questions reads: “Can a retail CBDC incorporate additional functionality without requiring users to use smartphones?”

Earlier PwC named leaders in the development of retail CBDCs: The Bahamas, Cambodia, China and Ukraine.

According to Raiffeisen Bank, by 2025 10% of countries will have their own digital currencies and exchanges for trading them.

Global CBDC Challenge Problem Statements by ForkLog on Scribd

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