DBS Bank
DBS and Open Government Products said they would run a four-week live pilot of purpose-bound money vouchers, built on tokenised SGD issued by DBS, for up to 1,000 consumers at six merchants under MAS's Project Orchid.
- Status
- Dead
- Announced
- (announcement)
- Stage
- Pilot
- Chain or network
- unknown
- Participants
- Open Government Products
- Next review
- None
Scorecard
As of the review on . Changes since the previous review are marked. How pilots are scored
| Ledger | Unknown |
|---|---|
| Settlement | Tokenised deposits |
| Access | Whitelisted institutions or investors |
| Legal standing | Unclear |
| Scale | Single transaction |
Review history
Live Pilot
Live pilot from 27 October 2022, with vouchers built on DBS-issued tokenised SGD for selected consumers. The ledger and the legal form of the tokens are not published; OGP's technical documentation or a DBS statement on the tokens' legal status would settle both.
Evidence: dbs.com, mas.gov.sg
Dead Pilot
The pilot had a four-week term from 27 October 2022. Searched the MAS Project Orchid page and the DBS newsroom; neither reports a further round of this voucher pilot. DBS's later programmable payments work runs under DBS Token Services, tracked separately. Quiet for more than 24 months, so dead.
Evidence: mas.gov.sg, dbs.com
What was announced
On 31 October 2022 DBS Bank said it had launched a live pilot of purpose-bound money (PBM) vouchers with Open Government Products (OGP). PBM is a protocol from Project Orchid, the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) work on a programmable digital Singapore dollar. It attaches conditions to money, such as where it can be spent. The vouchers were built on tokenised SGD issued by DBS, with smart contract functions supplied by OGP. Up to 1,000 selected consumers could spend them at six food and drink merchants in the central district for four weeks from 27 October 2022.
How it works
DBS issued the tokenised SGD, so the money behind each voucher was a DBS liability and settlement is tokenised-deposit. Participants were selected consumers and named merchants rather than any wallet holder, so access is whitelisted. The release does not name the blockchain or say whether the token or DBS’s core ledger was the legal record, so ledger is unknown and legal is unclear.
Record so far
The pilot made no commitments beyond its own scope: four weeks, up to 1,000 consumers and six merchants. DBS said it would also show the vouchers at the Singapore FinTech Festival in November 2022 and named government voucher schemes, donations and property conveyancing as possible later uses.
At the first review, on 31 October 2022, the pilot was live with real money for a bounded group, so the stage is pilot. One voucher issuance over a fixed period gives single scale.
MAS’s Project Orchid page lists the government voucher scenario with DBS among the Phase 1 trials shown at the 2022 festival and reports nothing later for it. DBS’s own later programmable payments work took other forms: a grant disbursement pilot with Enterprise Singapore and the Singapore Fintech Association and, from October 2024, the Conditional Payments and Programmable Rewards services in DBS Token Services. Those are covered in the DBS Token Services entry. This voucher pilot ended with its four-week term and has had no further round, so it is recorded as dead.
What to watch
Nothing is scheduled. A new government voucher round on the same design would reopen this entry.