Today the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) revealed its Project Ubin digital currency experiments have borne fruit with the commercialization of a cross-border payments network.
“DBS Bank, JP Morgan, and Temasek are leading the development of a digital multi-currency payments network aimed at enhancing commercial cross-border clearing and settlements globally. Pilot trials will commence next year,” said Ravi Menon, Managing Director of MAS, during a speech at the Singapore FinTech Festival.
He continued, “The goal of cheaper cross-border payments that settle round-the-clock and in real-time is drawing closer. SMEs will greatly benefit when this becomes a reality.”
From the description, it sounds like this may be more trade-focused rather than targeted at capital markets. This ties in with Singapore’s numerous blockchain initiatives in trade.
More than a year ago, MAS shared the results of the fifth and final phase of Project Ubin, which started as an exploration of central bank digital currency (CBDC) and finished in Phase 5 with commercial usage of both CBDC and private digital currencies issued by banks.
Project Ubin Phase 5 was based on the Quorum enterprise blockchain originally developed by JP Morgan. It used the capability of JP Morgan’s IIN (now Liink) and JPM Coin product, which tokenizes money. At the time, MAS explained to LEDGER Insights that the solution supported different issuers, including central banks and commercial banks. The ultimate goal of Phase 5 was to explore a variety of applications to use digital currency, including for bond issuance, cross-border payments, supply chain finance, advertising payments and several other use cases, all of which leveraged blockchain.
MAS jointly issued the Ubin report with Singaporean state-owned investment company Temasek, JP Morgan and Accenture and DBS Bank was a participant in Phase 5. As the largest bank in Singapore, DBS Bank has been a keen adopter of blockchain, especially for trade finance, where it’s involved in dltledgers, Contour, Marco Polo, Trusple and launched its own supply chain finance blockchain targeting Chinese firms. More recently, it revealed plans to launch a B2B digital exchange and security token offerings.
Temasek is no stranger to digital currency as a member of Diem (formerly Libra) and has been working on a blockchain bond issuance platform with HSBC and SGX.
Meanwhile, JP Morgan has set up a separate unit called Onyx, where this new cross border payments venture lives. Last month it said that JPM Coin was being used commercially by a large technology company for cross border payments. Before that, it transferred the Quorum blockchain to ConsenSys, which means the bank can focus on solutions.
