MAS Wants Wholesale CBDCs To Have Cross-Border Connectivity

The Singapore Monetary Authority (MAS) is intensifying its work on cross-border foreign exchange settlement using wholesale central bank digital currency.

Singapore will collaborate with a large number of foreign partners on many initiatives as part of Ubin+, which builds on Project Ubin.

Project Mariana will investigate the exchange and settlement of wholesale CBDCs denominated in Swiss francs, Euros, and Singapore dollars using an automated market maker arrangement. MAS, Banque de France, Swiss National Bank, and the Eurosystem, Switzerland, and Singapore Centres of the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub are collaborating on the initiative.

In the meanwhile, MAS is exploring cross-border interoperability between digital currencies based on DLT and non-DLT payment systems by participating in Swift’s CBDC Sandbox with more than 17 central banks and major commercial banks.

Lastly, the MAS is examining potential strategies to preserve connection across CBDC and other heterogeneous digital currency networks. MAS will also investigate the use of smart contracts to increase efficiency and decrease counterparty risk in the settlement of international transactions.

Sopnendu Mohanty, the MAS’s top fintech officer, explains:

“Interoperable wholesale digital currencies offer efficiency gains through a growing range of cross-border use cases. We will evaluate these new use cases simultaneously, to keep pace with technological advancements, focusing on use cases that create good value for the broadest range of stakeholders.”