Today the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative, Project Orchid. It plans to build the infrastructure to enable a digital Singapore dollar “should Singapore decide to do so in the future.” Some insiders in Singapore’s digital assets sector claim there could be some kind of CBDC in the next year or so. However, getting ready and deciding to launch are two different things.
Singapore has been at the forefront of CBDC research for several years with its current retail Global CBDC Challenge and the multi-phased Project Ubin. However, until recently, a lot of work has focused on wholesale CBDC rather than retail.
For example, Partior, the recently launched interbank cross border payment joint venture between JP Morgan, DBS Bank and Temasek, grew out of Ubin. As did Project Dunbar, a multi-CBDC (M-CBDC) cross border payments network initiated by MAS with the central banks of Australia, South Africa and Malaysia. In a speech today by MAS Managing Director Ravi Menon, he stated, “MAS sees much promise in wholesale CBDCs.”
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