Finalists for Singapore’s Global CBDC Challenge revealed 

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has finally revealed the finalists for its competition called the”Global CBDC Challenge.” 

The main goal of this competition is to challenge participants in developing viable retail CBDC solutions that can provide solutions to the current payment services system.

The MAS said that its Global CBDC Challenge has attracted more than 300 submissions from interested participants across 50 countries. It also added that the biggest chunk of the applications came from Asia.

Acceleration phase

The lucky finalists, which have gone through the competition’s rigorous standards, will now advance on the Challenge’s “Acceleration Phase.” The finalists consist of technology solutions providers, financial institutions, and fintech companies.

In the competition’s Acceleration Phase, the finalists will now develop their solutions that will be presented at the Singapore FinTech Festival which will be held in November this year.

The Global CBDC Challenge was launched last June in partnership with some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. The competition’s major partners include the International Monetary Fund, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme, to name a few.

The competition aims to solve the 12 biggest problems related to Central Bank Digital Currency instruments, infrastructure, and distribution.

Here are the 15 finalists of the CBDC Challenge:

• ANZ Banking Group
• Bitt
• Citibank Singapore
• cLabs
• Consensys
• Extolabs
• Giesecke + Devrient
• HSBC
• IBM
• IDEMIA
• Criteo
• IOG Singapore
• Soramitsu
• Standard Chartered Bank
• Xfers

“The Global CBDC Challenge aims to discover and develop retail CBDC solutions that will benefit the global community. We are encouraged by the strong interest from established financial institutions and emerging FinTechs alike,” Sopnendu Mohanty, MAS Chief Fintech Officer, said.

The competition is expected to provide viable solutions for the biggest problems that CBDC is facing today, and hopefully, these solutions can be applied on a global scale.

Image courtesy of Cointelegraph News/YouTube

Source: https://bitcoinerx.com/blockchain/finalists-for-singapores-global-cbdc-challenge-revealed/