Mastercard and Monetary Authority of Singapore Discuss Challenges and Potential of CBDCs

While Mastercard's Ashok Venkateswaran sees hurdles in widespread CBDC adoption, Singapore's central bank plans to pilot wholesale CBDCs in 2024.

Mastercard's lead for blockchain and digital assets in Asia-Pacific, Ashok Venkateswaran, asserts that the current landscape doesn't provide sufficient grounds for the widespread adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), making broad implementation challenging.
Venkateswaran points to Singapore as an example where the highly efficient payment system diminishes the need for a retail CBDC, but sees potential in a wholesale CBDC for interbank settlements.
Singapore’s central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), plans to test the live usage of wholesale CBDCs in 2024, aligning with the global trend towards the adoption of CBDCs.
MAS's Managing Director, Ravi Menon, announced the plan at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2023, stating that wholesale CBDCs are used primarily by central banks and other financial institutions to settle large-value transactions.
Venkateswaran emphasized that the decision to adopt a CBDC should hinge on the specific needs and challenges of a country, and simply replacing an existing domestic payment network with a CBDC may not be effective.