The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the completion of a live trial of wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) for interbank overnight lending and released proposed rules for artificial intelligence (AI) use across the financial sector.
"DBS, OCBC and UOB have successfully conducted interbank overnight lending transactions using the first live trial issuance of Singapore dollar wholesale CBDC," says Chia Der Jiun, managing director at MAS, at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025 this morning.
The test network provides three functions designed to improve efficiency. This includes a common settlement asset to reduce market fragmentation, programmability that enables real-time execution of contractual terms, and support for simultaneous settlement of cash and securities to eliminate timing mismatches that create risk.
"The tokenised transfer of value enables 24/7 settlements, programmability, and unlocks trapped pockets of liquidity. As more institutions adopt these instruments and technologies, common standards and shared regulated infrastructures are required to enable widespread scalability," says Rachel Chew, group COO and head of Digital Currencies, Global Transaction Services at DBS.
She continues: "This successful pilot paves the way for broader adoption and a wider range of use cases. By leveraging wholesale CBDCs as a common settlement asset, Singapore has developed a viable blueprint for the next generation of always-on financial market infrastructures."
The CBDC push comes as financial institutions worldwide experiment with blockchain-based settlement systems to reduce costs and speed up transactions. Singapore has positioned itself as a testing ground for such technologies through initiatives including Project Guardian, which explores the tokenisation of financial assets.
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MAS plans to expand the pilot by “trialling the issuance of tokenised MAS bills to primary dealers and settling with CBDC," says Chia, adding that more details will be released next year.
