Today DBS Bank announced it conducted a pilot for the disbursement of Enterprise Singapore government grants to 27 fintech firms. The pilot was initiated by the Singapore Fintech Association. DBS programmed the qualifying conditions to receive the grant into smart contracts on the DBS permissioned DLT. This automatically triggered money transfers to the beneficiaries that met the conditions.
A system such as this aims to improve the control over grant disbursements and reduce the need to make manual payments. It also helps with transparency and operational efficiency.
These were conventional payments triggered by smart contracts, as opposed to tokenized payments. However, DBS used some of the lessons from participating in purpose bound money pilots for tokenized cash, which are part of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Orchid. The next phase of the grant pilot will be part of Project Orchid.
“Smart contract technology automates and streamlines grant disbursements for government agencies to enable faster, more secure disbursements and payments,” said Han Kwee Juan, Country Head of DBS Singapore. “We envision this payment innovation being extended to more use cases including milestone-based project payments, consumer rewards and more.”
Last week DBS announced another pilot, this time for Treasury Tokens with Ant International. This supports multi-currency tokenized deposits for payments between bank branches. DBS is also an investor in Partior, the tokenized solution for multi-currency interbank payments.
