The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced the successful completion of a live trial for settling interbank overnight lending transactions using wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Conducted on the Singapore Dollar Test Network (SGD Testnet), the trial involved major financial institutions DBS, OCBC, and UOB, marking the first live issuance of Singapore dollar wholesale CBDC with transactions recorded in the banks’ official books and regulatory filings.
The SGD Testnet offers three core functionalities for participating financial institutions: a common settlement asset, programmability, and multi-asset support. The common settlement asset functionality allows for the issuance, transfer, and redemption of Singapore dollar wholesale CBDC, reducing settlement risk and market fragmentation. Programmability enables the development of conditional logic for real-time execution of contractual terms. The multi-asset support facilitates atomic settlement of both cash and securities components, eliminating risks associated with different settlement times or systems.
MAS plans to build on this pilot by issuing tokenised MAS Bills to Primary Dealers in a future trial, which will also be settled using CBDC. Further details of this upcoming trial are expected to be shared in 2026. This initiative is part of MAS’s broader strategy to advance asset tokenisation through commercial networks, market infrastructure development, and industry frameworks.
