Under the new agreement, the two cities will participate in joint fintech innovation projects
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) on Wednesday signed an agreement to strengthen fintech cooperation between the two cities and foster fintech development in the region at the FinTech Day event organised by HKMA.
The two authorities’ first collaborative initiative will be a strategic project on trade finance cross-border infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology, with more details about the project set to be announced in November.
They are also set to collaborate on other fintech initiatives, facilitate referrals of innovative businesses, share information, and exchange expertise in order to facilitate innovation in the two cities.
“Collaboration between the HKMA and MAS will create significant synergy for the development of fintech and more efficient fund flows between the two markets,” said HKMA Chief Executive Norman Chan in a press statement.
MAS Managing Director Ravi Menon highlighted Singapore and Hong Kong’s “extensive financial and trade linkage.”
“We are especially pleased that we have a live project to enhance the trade finance corridor between the two financial centres,” he said.
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Singapore has been pushing for a greater adoption of cashless payments system, following a National Day Rally speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
In early October, Bank of Thailand Director of Payment Systems Policy Naphongthawat Phothikit told Bloomberg that Singapore and Thailand are in early stage talks to connect their digital payments system PayNow and PromptPay, as part of an effort to “modernise payments process.”
Even ride-hailing companies such as Grab has been making efforts to make its cashless payments system GrabPay available for transactions outside of the Grab platform; the company will debut the use of GrabPay for offline retail transaction through a collaboration with Cedele on November 5.
Hong Kong itself in January has launched a US$250 million (or HK$2 billion) government investment fund aimed at boosting technology and innovation in Hong Kong.
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