Catenaa, Friday, November 14, 2025- The Monetary Authority of Singapore plans to trial the issuance of tokenized MAS bills to primary dealers, settled using the country’s central bank digital currency. Details of the trial are expected to be released next year.
MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun said Thursday at the Singapore FinTech Festival that tokenization has moved beyond experimentation and is now applied in commercial settings.
Chia noted tokenized finance offers round-the-clock settlement, fewer intermediaries, and more efficient collateral usage, though structural challenges remain for large-scale adoption.
Three Singapore banks—DBS, OCBC, and UOB—have conducted interbank overnight lending using the Singapore dollar wholesale CBDC in a trial, reflecting the central bank’s efforts to scale tokenized finance with safe settlement assets.
Chia also highlighted the MAS’s regulatory approach to stablecoins, classifying them as digital payment tokens under the Payment Services Act.
The framework, introduced in August 2023, applies to single-currency stablecoins pegged to the Singapore dollar or major currencies such as the US dollar and euro.
MAS finalized its stablecoin regulatory regime and is preparing draft legislation, emphasizing reserve backing and redemption reliability.
Unregulated stablecoins, Chia warned, have shown inconsistent peg maintenance and could trigger systemic runs similar to the 2008 money market fund failures. The MAS has also launched the BLOOM initiative to support industry experimentation with tokenized bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins for settlement.
The upcoming MAS trial signals Singapore’s continued push to integrate CBDC and tokenization into mainstream financial markets while maintaining regulatory oversight.
