The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) just shortlisted multinational tech giant IBM and 14 other companies in an effort to create its own central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In June, the MAS announced big partnerships with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and others to launch a “Global CBDC Challenge.”
The challenge “seeks innovative retail CBDC solutions to enhance payment efficiencies and promote financial inclusion.”
According to challenge guidelines, tech firms will be given access to the APIX digital currency Sandbox for rapid prototyping of digital currency solutions. Participants are also at liberty to use their own solution.
Now that finalists have been chosen, each company will have to submit its CBDC solution on October 31st. Finalists will pitch their solutions at Singapore’s FinTech (financial technology) Festival on November 8th, where up to three winners will be selected to receive a $50,000 reward.
An official release from the MAS shows that IBM was selected among 14 other top tech firms to compete in the challenge. According to the report, IBM wants to build a robust CDBC infrastructure that maintains security without hindering performance.
“The solution seeks to build a resilient and robust retail CBDC infrastructure to handle [a] large number of transactions, while maintaining the operation performance and ensuring security to a great extent through a zero trust system that is flexible and easy to include new capabilities without incurring additional cost and changes to existing architecture and design.”
Other top contestants include Visa-partnered blockchain software company ConsenSys, and the Singaporean-based bank subsidiaries Citibank N.A., HSBC Bank Limited and HSBC Holdings, as well as Standard Chartered Bank.
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