Monetary Authority of Singapore

The profile

The Monetary Authority of Singapore describes itself as 'Singapore's central bank and integrated financial regulator', a combination that is unusual among large financial centres and that shapes how it has approached tokenized money. Parliament passed the Monetary Authority of Singapore Act in 1970 and MAS was formed on 1 January 1971, taking over monetary functions previously spread across government departments; insurance regulation came to it in April 1977, securities regulation in September 1984, and currency issuance on 1 October 2002 when it merged with the Board of Commissioners of Currency. As central bank it conducts monetary policy through the exchange rate rather than an interest rate, manages the official foreign reserves and oversees payment systems; as supervisor it has prudential oversight of banks, insurers, capital market intermediaries, financial advisers and the exchanges; and it has an explicit statutory job of developing Singapore as an international financial centre, which is why its digital asset work reads as industry development as often as it reads as regulation. Its board is appointed by the President and chaired on the Cabinet's recommendation, currently by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong, with Chia Der Jiun as managing director. On stablecoins it consulted in October 2022, published a finalised framework in August 2023 for single-currency stablecoins pegged to the Singapore dollar or a G10 currency, and on 1 September 2026 put the legislative text out for comment, proposing a dedicated licence class, a bar on issuers doing anything else, a prohibition on paying interest, a designation regime for systemic stablecoins and a reversal of its own 2023 position against multi-jurisdictional issuance.