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.
Mastercard and Visa are extending stablecoin technology into the systems that settle card payments between financial institutions, while leaving the consumer checkout experience largely unchanged. Mastercard completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure provider BVNK in August 2026 and has expanded its network’s settlement options to include regulated stablecoins. Visa, meanwhile, is working with Stripe-owned Bridge and Lead Bank on on-chain settlement for card programs. The shift became more concrete in September, when SoFi Bank moved its credit and debit card issuing portfolio to live settlement using its bank-issued SoFiUSD. That portfolio represents more than $25 billion in annualized card volume, a measure distinct from the value settled in stablecoins. Visa separately reported an annualized stablecoin settlement run rate exceeding $25 billion in October. The networks’ initiatives target the back-end movement and reconciliation of funds, including periods when traditional bank settlement rails are unavailable; they do not require merchants to accept cryptocurrency.
The European Central Bank has launched Pontes, a bridge connecting tokenised-asset platforms to the Eurosystem’s TARGET Services for wholesale settlement in central bank money. The arrangement enables atomic delivery-versus-payment settlement, in which an asset and its payment move together. It does not yet make wholesale settlement available around the clock: Pontes depends on T2 operating hours and requires tokenised central bank money balances to be defunded at the end of the day. ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone says the Eurosystem plans to extend Pontes operating hours substantially by mid-2027 and reach 24/7/365 availability in 2028. Separately, the Bank for International Settlements’ Project Agorá has tested cross-border payments using a shared programmable ledger that brings tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves into a single settlement process. Both initiatives address delays and liquidity demands in wholesale payments, but neither makes continuous, cross-border settlement available today.
Project Agorá’s real-value testing settled 30 live, multi-currency transactions worth approximately CHF 800,000, with atomic settlement averaging about 80 seconds. The tests involved 28 commercial institutions and five central banks. The result shows how tokenised commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves could support faster cross-border settlement, though it does not establish that settlement latency has been eliminated. The project’s prototype found that tokenisation did not change the legal character or regulatory obligations of deposits and reserves. Its design also let participating institutions conduct compliance checks concurrently. Seven more commercial banks joined in September 2026, taking private-sector participation to nearly 50 institutions. At Sibos in October, banking executives described the testing pipeline as a step towards production trials alongside the European Central Bank’s Pontes platform. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York did not participate in the live test transactions, an important qualification for the US dollar tests.
Ripple’s final federal trust bank charter, a Moody’s investment-grade rating for RLUSD and a planned expansion of the stablecoin’s availability on Coinbase have strengthened its position as a regulated digital dollar. Coinbase said Global Exchange access, including eligibility to use RLUSD as trading collateral, will follow its initial retail and prime rollout. Moody’s assigned RLUSD an A2 long-term deposit rating and a P-1 short-term rating, the first investment-grade rating it has given a stablecoin. The distinctions behind those developments matter. Ripple National Trust Bank manages RLUSD’s reserve collateral, but the legal issuer remains Standard Custody & Trust Company, a New York-regulated Ripple subsidiary. The national trust bank is uninsured and cannot take commercial retail deposits or extend credit. Moody’s also noted that holders do not currently own the underlying reserves directly and that statutory bankruptcy protections depend on implementation of the GENIUS Act, whose rules take effect in January 2027.
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.