Overview

• 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.