MAS Conducts Two Tokenised Bill Trials Settled in Wholesale CBDC

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has quietly completed two trial issuances of tokenised MAS bills over the past month, both settled using wholesale central bank digital currency on the Singapore dollar testnet. The first, worth S$1 million, was issued on 23 September and matured a week later; the second, worth S$10 million (approximately USD 7.8 million), was issued more recently and is due to mature on 23 October. Both remain restricted to institutional investors, mirroring the access rules for conventional MAS bills.

The scale and duration of these trials sit far below normal operating parameters. Typical MAS bill issuances exceed S$10 billion, and standard tenors run four, twelve, or thirty-six weeks, which means these sub-S$10 million, one-to-two-week instruments are clearly capability tests rather than market interventions. MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun framed the programme as building institutional readiness to bring tokenised assets and tokenised central bank money onto shared infrastructure, emphasising settlement certainty and finality as the primary goals.

If the programme advances beyond trials, the tokenised bills could take on roles beyond straightforward debt issuance. As Chia’s remarks were being delivered, analysts noted possible applications as collateral backing SGD stablecoins or as instruments for intraday repo, though neither use case was addressed formally by MAS. Whether the programme scales, and at what pace, is the question operators in Singapore’s digital asset market will now be watching closely.