By
Tokoni Uti
February 29th, 2024
The merchant program ensures automated settlement of e-CNY into businesses’ DBS bank accounts.
Clients of the Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) can now get payments from their customers in e-CNY, electronic Chinese Yuan. The e-CNY is the digital currency of the Chinese central bank, issued by the People’s Bank of China. The announcement about this was made on Wednesday, July 5.
The merchant program launched by the bank helps businesses receive payments in digital currency while having automated settlement of e-CNY in their DBS bank deposit accounts.
Based on the information from the Development Bank of Singapore, at least one client has transacted using the platform. With this, when a client pays a business using e-CNY, the fund will automatically appear in the business’s DBS account.
Ginger Cheng, the Chief Executive Officer of DBS Bank (China), stated:
“We received strong interest from several clients for the solution since its launch, and we are pleased to have completed the first e-CNY collection for a client – a catering company in Shenzhen. By seamlessly integrating a CBDC collection and settlement method into our clients’ existing payment systems, this will help position their business for a digital future where consumers in China use e-CNY for their daily activities.”
DBS Committed to Making Digital Innovations to Facilitate Payments with e-CNY
DBS is also engaging in other initiatives in the financial technology space. The bank is participating in Project Guardian, a program launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to see how asset tokenization and decentralized finance (defi) will work with a bank like DBS. The project will explore the potential benefits and the likely challenges banks may face when incorporating these new technologies.
Project Guardian includes institutions like JP Morgan, Japan’s SBI Digital, Marketnode, and Temasek. It uses technologies like Aave, Uniswap, and Polygon as part of the infrastructure for testing the DeFi and asset tokenization programs.
In the first phase of Project Guardian testing, transactions were carried out with tokenized versions of the Singapore dollar (SGD), Japanese Yen (JPY), Singapore government securities, and Japanese government bonds.
The bank is also involved in projects surrounding the creation of infrastructure for issuing programmable digital Singapore dollars. The project seeks to determine how to create a digital version of the Singapore dollar that can carry out specific functions based on how it is programmed. This is no doubt related to the goal of creating a more efficient financial service.
Apart from the projects that have been described, DBS has been involved in several other projects. In 2021, it co-founded Partior, a solution for carrying out payments across borders and also easing the global movement of value for banks. It was also a part of Project Orchid, which aimed at creating a structure for issuing programmable digital Singapore dollars.
These developments show that the Development Bank of Singapore is committed to exploring digital innovations to make payments safer and more efficient. These are solid moves toward transforming the future of money.