Singapore Blockchain Payment Project Set For Commercial Deployment

Project Ubin, a blockchain-driven product by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), is now ready for commercial launch.

MAS, Singapore’s central bank, announced today that Project Ubin is ready for commercial use. According to the MAS website, the scheme “is a collaborative project with the industry, to explore the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) for clearing and settlement of payments and securities.”

According to its outlined timeline, Phase 1 of the project involved tokenizing the Singapore Dollar (SGD). It started in November 2016 and concluded in March 2017. MAS partnered with over 10 top industry players in various aspects of the finance and blockchain industry.

Phase 2 was integrating Real-time gross settlement (RTGS). MAS turned to IBM, Microsoft, ConsenSys, R3, and Accenture to create a prototype.

Phases 3 and 4 of the project were developing Delivery versus Payment (DvP) and Payment versus Payment (PvP) protocols respectively. DvP is a protocol for settling payments between various blockchain networks, while PvP is for settling cross-border payments.

The final phase of the project was creating a broad ecosystem prototype and testing it with various currencies from around the world. Today, MAS announced the successful completion of the test.

In June 2020, MAS announced plans of partnering with China to explore central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

Earlier this year, Singapore introduced a Payments Services Act to guide crypto exchanges in the country.