MAS Pilots Wholesale CBDC Settlement for Tokenized Bills on Singapore Dollar Testnet
Oct. 13, 2026 • Article • Digital Assets
The Monetary Authority of Singapore conducted two pilot issuances of tokenized MAS Bills settled using wholesale Singapore dollar central bank digital currency on the SGD Testnet in September and October 2026. The first issuance, on September 23, was S$1 million and matured after one week. The second was S$10 million and matures on October 23. MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun described the settlement initiative in an October 9 keynote at the INSEAD Digital Finance & Agentic AI Summit. The trials are limited to institutional investors and primary dealers, not retail users. They extend the SGD Testnet’s use beyond the interbank overnight lending transactions it first settled among DBS Bank, OCBC and UOB in November 2025. The pilot amounts are experimental compared with standard MAS Bill auctions, which regularly exceed S$10 billion. MAS is also consulting on amendments to the Payment Services Act for its Single-Currency Stablecoin framework, with the consultation closing on October 16.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) conducted two pilot issuances of tokenized MAS Bills settled with wholesale Singapore dollar central bank digital currency (CBDC) on the SGD Testnet in September and October 2026. The trials put central bank digital money to work in settling tokenized instruments, while keeping participation limited to institutional investors and primary dealers.
The first pilot issuance, on September 23, was S$1 million and matured after one week. A second issuance was S$10 million and matures on October 23, 2026. MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun formally announced the next step of settling tokenized MAS Bills using wholesale CBDC in an October 9 keynote at the INSEAD Digital Finance & Agentic AI Summit.
The instruments are MAS Bills, rather than Singapore Government bills. That distinction matters when describing what the pilots tested: they involved tokenized versions of central bank bills and settlement in wholesale CBDC. The reported issuance sizes are experimental, not an indication of the scale of MAS’s regular bill auctions.
Small Issuances Test a Different Settlement Method
Tokenization represents an asset on a digital ledger. In these trials, MAS paired tokenized bills with wholesale CBDC, a digital form of central bank money intended for institutional settlement rather than retail spending. Both the instrument and the means of payment therefore formed part of the test.
The two issuances also differed in size and timing. The S$1 million bill issued on September 23 matured after one week; the S$10 million bill matures on October 23. The available information establishes those pilot amounts and dates, but does not identify a wider group of participants or specify whether MAS plans further issuances. The trials should not be read as a launch for retail investors: access to the tokenized bills is restricted to institutions and primary dealers.
The pilots are small beside standard MAS Bill auctions, which regularly exceed S$10 billion and have tenors of four, 12 and 36 weeks. That contrast helps define the exercise. The reported transactions demonstrate the use of a different issuance and settlement arrangement at experimental scale; they do not establish that regular auctions have moved to the same infrastructure.
SGD Testnet Extends Beyond Interbank Lending
Settlement takes place on the Singapore Dollar Test Network, or SGD Testnet, a shared ledger infrastructure. MAS first operationalized it for live transactions in November 2025, when it settled interbank overnight lending among DBS Bank, OCBC and UOB. Using the network for tokenized MAS Bills applies it to a different financial instrument.
The move sits within Singapore’s broader asset-tokenization roadmap, which includes Project Guardian and the Global Layer One (GL1) infrastructure standard. Those initiatives provide context for MAS’s interest in shared infrastructure, but the reported bill pilots are specifically wholesale CBDC settlements on the SGD Testnet. The research does not establish that the other initiatives processed either issuance.
For institutions, the relevant question is how a tokenized instrument is paid for at settlement. MAS’s trials use wholesale CBDC for that payment, rather than positioning central bank digital currency as a product for consumers. MAS maintains that Singapore currently has no compelling use case or urgent need for a retail CBDC, and its stated focus remains wholesale settlement.
MAS Sets Out Roles for Digital Money
In his October 9 address, Chia described a hierarchy for digital forms of money. He placed wholesale CBDC at the apex as an anchor for monetary stability, identified tokenized bank deposits with commercial banking cash management, and associated stablecoins primarily with crypto exchanges and fintech payments. The bill pilots illustrate the first of those roles; they do not imply that the three forms are interchangeable.
MAS is separately consulting on legislative amendments to the Payment Services Act for its Single-Currency Stablecoin framework. That consultation reaches its closing date on October 16, 2026. It is a regulatory process distinct from the wholesale CBDC bill trials, although both form part of MAS’s work on digital money.
The immediate result is a pair of experimental tokenized MAS Bill issuances on a network already used for live interbank transactions. Their limited size and institutional scope leave open whether the arrangement will be used for larger or more routine issuances. MAS has identified wholesale CBDC settlement as the next step; the reported pilots show how that approach has been tested so far.
Ramp partnered with Stripe and Bridge in July 2026 to deploy stablecoin rails for business bill payments and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts funded through standard fiat bank accounts. The arrangement shows how stablecoins can be incorporated into familiar payment workflows without requiring businesses to fund every transaction with digital assets. The economics depend on more than the cost of moving a token on-chain. Stripe charges merchants 1.5% for stablecoin checkout transactions, versus its standard card-processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30; neither figure establishes the price of Ramp’s bill-payment service. Businesses receiving fiat may also face foreign-exchange and off-ramp costs, typically 0.3% to 2.0% when converting into local banking systems. Domestic clearing networks and compliance checks remain part of end-to-end delivery. Bridge’s issuance and transfer tools, alongside its conditional U.S. trust-bank approval, illustrate the infrastructure behind those payments—but not the elimination of every payment cost.
StraitsX has opened onboarding for digital payment token providers across more than 100 markets through an expanded card-issuing architecture developed with Visa. Integration documentation published on 26 October 2026 describes a multi-BIN model that combines issuing sponsorship, transaction authorization, compliance screening and fiat clearing. The approach lets participating providers build stablecoin-backed card products while merchants continue to receive conventional fiat payments through Visa’s network. StraitsX says its card gross transaction value rose 40-fold year on year from Q4 2024 to Q4 2025, while cards issued across Asia increased 83-fold. On-chain issuer telemetry recorded monthly card transaction volume of $310 million to $438 million through October 2026. The company’s stated $6 billion annualized card transaction figure is distinct from its cumulative $70 billion in processed stablecoin volume. StraitsX and Visa have also scheduled demonstrations of agentic payments for November 2026.
ACI Worldwide and Circle announced a pilot on October 27, 2026, involving USDC and connectivity to Colombia’s Bre-B instant payments system. The integration runs through ACI Connetic, a payments orchestration platform, rather than embedding USDC in Bre-B’s central infrastructure. There is no indication that Colombia’s central bank has adopted USDC as a settlement asset for the national network. The distinction matters because ACI also supplies technology for Bre-B’s central directory and real-time clearing engine. Bre-B launched in October 2025 and handled more than 500 million transactions within five months. Connetic is designed to bring traditional payment rails and digital asset networks together without requiring banks to replace legacy core ledgers. ACI says the platform can support other digital assets and liquidity providers, so the pilot does not make USDC its exclusive option. The arrangement tests a vendor-level connection alongside an established public payment system, not a change to that system’s settlement rules.
Ripple received final approval on 26 October 2026 for Ripple National Trust Bank, giving it a federally chartered institution for fiduciary and custody activities. The charter does not authorize commercial deposits or loans, and it does not transfer issuance of Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin to the new bank. RLUSD issuance remains with Standard Custody & Trust Company under New York State Department of Financial Services supervision. BNY is the primary custodian of the dollar deposits and U.S. Treasury reserves backing the stablecoin. The arrangement separates a federal custody role from state-supervised issuance. It also comes as the OCC implements the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin rules and faces a lawsuit from the Independent Community Bankers of America challenging its authority to grant national trust charters to crypto firms. Ripple has separately announced an expanded partnership with BNY and Robinhood focused on institutional custody capabilities and exploring tokenized trade finance.
Stripe confirmed in October 2026 that it plans to expand its Bridge- and Visa-powered stablecoin card issuing program from 18 initial countries to more than 100 by the end of the year. The planned rollout spans Europe, Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It follows Stripe’s February 2025 acquisition of Bridge, whose APIs connect stablecoin transfers with fiat accounts and bank payouts. Stripe has also made Open USD available to businesses in Stripe Financial Accounts alongside USDC. Its broader stablecoin infrastructure combines Bridge’s conversion tools with Stripe’s existing payment and treasury network and embedded wallets from Privy. Lead Bank supports the card program as a financial institution partner and BIN sponsor. A separate deployment by Ramp uses Bridge APIs and Privy wallets to let businesses pay vendors in stablecoins using funds from fiat bank accounts. Together, the developments show how Stripe is assembling stablecoin services for business payments, while the planned geographic expansion remains unfinished.
Project Agorá settled approximately CHF 800,000 in live, multi-currency transactions during a July 2026 testing phase. The work examined a cross-border payment model that places tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared ledger while holding tokenised central bank reserves on jurisdictional ledgers. Five central banks participated directly in live-reserve settlement, although the project’s wider central-bank group has since expanded to eight with the Bank of Canada’s entry. The project reports an average settlement time of 80 seconds across six currencies and uses smart contracts to run anti-money laundering, sanctions and fraud checks simultaneously. Legal analyses found that tokenisation did not change the underlying character of deposits or reserves in participating jurisdictions. The findings support further work on deposit-based wholesale settlement, but the supplied research does not establish that the approach outperforms stablecoins. The Eurosystem plans to draw on Agorá’s architecture for Projects Pontes and Appia.