Singapore’s National Bank and IMF Launch Competition for CBDC Solution

The Money Authority of Singapore has partnered with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to launch a competition to tackle problems of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The participants in the competition are to proffer solutions to the 12 issues that are likely to be posed to the financial system by CBDCs.

The challenge tagged “Global CBDC challenge” is said to be supported by companies such as Mastercard; payment giant, Hyperledger Blockchain project, Amazon web services, Blockchain developer R3, Partior among others.

The first question on the CBDC challenge asks if CBDCs have other use cases other than ease of transfers and if smartphones will be needed to make use of it;

See also:Palestine to Begin Study on CBDC 

“Can a retail CBDC system be embedded with additional functionalities beyond a basic transfer of value without requiring users to use smartphones?(or other expensive/complex hardware)? How might this improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Government-to-Person payment programmes in the context of an economy with low levels of digital penetration?”

Participants who reach the final stage will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas at the Singapore FinTech festival in November this year, 2021. Three winners will be selected at the end of the challenge with a cash prize of  S$50,000 (US$37,193) each. The first 15 finalists will be rewarded with a mentorship and access to the APIX Digital Currency Sandbox according to MAS.

For the past few weeks, it’s been news from different countries urging their central banks to begin feasibility studies on the potentials of a CBDC. Is this going to be another evolution in finance?

See also:Rwanda to Begin Feasibility Studies on CBDC

What do you think? Share your comments below