In an address at INSEAD, the Monetary Authority of Singapore set out the foundations it considers necessary to move tokenised finance from experimentation to commercial scale. These comprise clear legal and regulatory treatment for digital assets, trusted digital money anchored in the central bank monetary system and interoperable infrastructure linking multiple institutional networks. MAS also announced its next step for wholesale central bank digital currency, settling tokenised MAS Bills with wholesale Singapore dollar CBDC on common infrastructure to provide settlement certainty and finality. For digital assets, MAS is using Project Guardian standards, regulatory guidance and industry coordination to promote use cases with broad market demand rather than isolated proprietary ecosystems. BLOOM is advancing domestic and cross-border settlement using tokenised bank deposits and regulated stablecoins, while the proposed Single-Currency Stablecoin framework would impose reserve, capital, redemption and disclosure safeguards. Global Layer One is developing common governance, resilience, compliance and connectivity standards to support cross-border transactions across different ledgers without prescribing a single technology. MAS also addressed the intersection of agentic AI, tokenised assets and digital money. Version 1.1 of its Safeguards for Agentic Finance at Runtime framework and an open-source reference implementation provide controls for agent identity and authorization, checking actions against user mandates, and maintaining accountability and auditability. This work complements MAS’ recently finalized sectorwide AI risk management guidelines as financial institutions prepare for systems capable of initiating and executing transactions autonomously.
Monetary Authority of Singapore outlines digital finance scaling agenda, plans tokenised MAS Bill settlement with wholesale CBDC
The Monetary Authority of Singapore outlined a framework for scaling tokenised finance through regulatory clarity, trusted digital money and interoperable networks. It plans to settle tokenised MAS Bills with wholesale Singapore dollar CBDC and is advancing shared standards through Project Guardian, BLOOM and Global Layer One. MAS also released an updated runtime safeguards framework and open-source implementation for agentic finance.