Singapore plans wholesale CBDC settlement for tokenised MAS Bills
The planned initiative would put tokenised assets and digital central bank money on shared infrastructure to support settlement finality.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) plans to settle tokenised MAS Bills using wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC). Managing director Chia Der Jiun presented the proposal on 9 October at the INSEAD Digital Finance & Agentic AI Summit.
The plan seeks to support settlement finality by placing digital central bank money and tokenised assets on shared infrastructure. In 2025, MAS introduced wholesale Singapore dollar CBDC through its Singapore dollar Test Network. The first successful trial settled overnight interbank loans involving DBS, OCBC and UOB.
Chia said CBDCs would eventually be necessary to anchor monetary stability as private digital money becomes more widely used. Under BLOOM, MAS and industry participants are working on settlement within Singapore and across borders, using regulated stablecoins and tokenised deposits at banks.
MAS has consulted on changes to legislation for implementing its Single-Currency Stablecoin framework. The framework addresses reserves, capital, redemption obligations and disclosures.
The regulator is also pursuing broader commercial use of tokenisation through Project Guardian, although adoption remains concentrated in smaller ecosystems. Its Global Layer One (GL1) initiative is developing shared standards to help digital financial networks work together.
Separately, MAS published Version 1.1 of its Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime (SAFR) white paper and an open-source reference implementation supporting controls for AI agents that carry out financial transactions.
