The Monetary Authority of Singapore, the country’s central bank and premier financial regulator, challenges fintech firms to develop solutions for a central bank digital currency, also known as CBDC.

On Monday, the central bank officially announced a global challenge to find new retail CBDC solutions to improve payment efficiency and promote financial inclusion. As part of the initiative, MAS plans to distribute S $ 50,000 and US $ 37,000 to each of the three Challenge winners at press time. They will also provide technical mentoring to the 15 finalists to encourage the rapid development of digital currency solutions.

Singapore’s CBDC Challenge is being launched in partnership with major global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the United Nations Development Program and others. The initiative is also backed by industry players like payment giant MasterCard, Amazon Web Services, R3, Hyperledger, and the Mojaloop Foundation, and is managed by API Exchange and the Singapore-based blockchain accelerator Tribe Accelerator.

Global fintech firms and organizations have until July 23 to register for the CBDC challenge, the announcement said.

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Sopnendu Mohanty, MAS Chief Fintech Officer, noted that the initiative intends to gather industry solutions to a range of technological and policy challenges related to CBDC development. “MAS hopes to encourage the global community of innovators to develop and showcase solutions that can maximize the potential of CBDCs to make payment services more efficient and improve financial magnate inclusion, in line with central banks’ core mission of monetary stability” the executive remarked.

Singapore has become a major global player in the development of digital currencies and is actively researching both the CBDC and crypto industries. The country is exploring a CBDC for wholesale, MAS said last year that the bank didn’t see much demand for a CBDC for retail as Singapore’s payment systems infrastructure already offers fast, cheap payments. Singaporean banking giant DBS, one of the largest asset managers in Asia outside of China, launched its own crypto escrow solution in May 2021 after establishing a ministerial division for cryptocurrency exchanges last year.