MAS outlines digital finance trust framework for tokenisation and digital money

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MAS digital finance trust framework

Highlights

MAS emphasized legal clarity, shared standards, and trusted infrastructure to enable safe, scalable, and commercial adoption of tokenised finance, moving beyond technology pilot phases.
MAS advanced settlement platforms by trialing SGD wholesale CBDC for interbank lending with DBS, OCBC, and UOB in 2025 and preparing to settle tokenised MAS Bills with wholesale CBDC.
MAS and partners launched Global Layer One (GL1) and toolkits to foster cross-border interoperability and resilience in tokenised markets, while developing SAFR guidelines for agentic finance powered by AI.

Singapore's roadmap for digital finance scale-up

As outlined by the Monetary Authority of Singapore at the INSEAD Digital Finance & Agentic AI Summit on 9 October 2026, the regulator is focusing on legal clarity, shared standards and trusted infrastructure to support wider adoption of tokenised finance. Managing Director Chia Der Jiun says the priority is no longer proving that the technology works, but ensuring it can operate safely, commercially and at scale.

MAS says tokenisation is moving beyond experimentation, with Project Guardian helping test applications across asset classes and develop common standards on asset servicing, disclosure, interoperability and risk management. The regulator adds that its guide on the tokenisation of capital markets products is intended to show how existing securities laws apply to tokenised offerings, while further legal questions remain under review.

The speech also points to digital money as a critical condition for growth in tokenised markets. MAS says settlement assets will need value stability, broad acceptability and interoperability, with tokenised bank deposits, regulated stablecoins and central bank digital currency likely to serve different use cases rather than a single model dominating the market.

MAS says it is advancing this work through BLOOM, its platform for settlement arrangements using digital money, covering both domestic and cross-border applications. The regulator also says wholesale Singapore dollar CBDC was made available through the Singapore dollar Test Network, which was operational in 2025 and completed its first successful trial in interbank overnight lending transactions between DBS, OCBC and UOB.

In a further step, MAS says it is moving to settle tokenised MAS Bills with SGD wholesale CBDC. The regulator has also consulted on legislative amendments for its Single-Currency Stablecoin framework, including reserve backing, capital, redemption at par and disclosure requirements, as well as the treatment of cross-border activity and foreign stablecoins under comparable regimes.

Interoperability standards and agentic finance implications

MAS says the future market structure is more likely to be a network of networks than a single global ledger, as institutions and jurisdictions adopt different technologies and regulatory models. In that environment, the regulator argues that interoperability is essential to avoid fragmented liquidity, duplicated processes and inefficient scaling of tokenised markets.

To address that, MAS and industry partners are working through Global Layer One, or GL1, to support institutional-grade infrastructure for cross-border tokenised transactions. The initiative has published a Market Infrastructure Toolkit and a Programmable Compliance Toolkit, which MAS says are designed to help networks meet governance, resilience, risk management and compliance expectations for regulated financial activity.

Beyond tokenisation, the speech highlights the rise of agentic finance, where AI agents may analyse information and execute financial transactions on behalf of users and institutions. MAS says that trend could accelerate money movement, sharpen competition among financial institutions and create new demands in liquidity, collateral, identity, authority and accountability controls.

MAS says it is developing safeguards for that shift through the SAFR white paper, updated to Version 1.1 with input from financial institutions and frontier AI developers. Through the Future of Finance Institute, it has also released an open-source reference implementation to support industry testing, as the regulator continues to back a public-private partnership model for standards in digital finance.

Our earlier coverage of Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman’s comments on tokenisation highlighted how turning assets like Treasurys, equities and money market funds into tokens could unlock billions in trapped collateral and make global capital flows more efficient. We also noted her view that a shift toward 24/7 markets would require always-on, real-time risk controls, with AI and digital agents playing a growing role in collateral and risk management.

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