IBM is set to open the first Centre for Blockchain Innovation in Singapore in a bid to attract more technical talent from the country.
Working with the Economic Development Board and Monetary Authority, the Centre aims to bring various technology pilots within the trade and finance industries over the next three years. IBM will also continue building on its work with the Linux Foundation Hyperledger platform.
Sopnendu Mohanty, chief FinTech officer of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said that the financial sector is ideally placed to play a leading role in Singapore’s vision of becoming a Smart Nation.
Given that technology is a key enabler of financial services, MAS is pleased to continue to work with companies like IBM to promote technology innovation in finance, and encourage the adoption of safe and efficient technology with the financial industry.
In addition to working with MAS, IBM will also team up with the Port Authority of Singapore(PSA), which is the world’s largest container transshipment port in a bid to bring together FinTech companies.
IBM are known to have initiated the execution within the transnational container shipment the early stage trials of blockchain technology and bitcoin-to-fiat payments.
Tan Chong Meng, Group CEO, PSA International, said that these are fields that the company can add value to due to their expertise as a hub port operator in Singapore and in other countries too.
We believe new technologies such as blockchain have the potential to reinvent multi-party business transactions and that Singapore is the right innovation hub to carry out field trials of such technologies across a variety of uses.
Featured image from Shutterstock. Rebecca Campbell