The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that Munich-based security technology group Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) was one of the three winners of the Global Central Bank Digital Currency Challenge (Global CBDC Challenge)

The challenge was a part of the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) that was held from 8 to 12 November 2021.

The other two winners of the challenge were ConsenSys and Criteo.

Selected from 15 finalists, the three top winners each received a cash prize of approximately US$37,000 (S$50,000).

The firm had presented its G+D Filia solution which is a token-based digital currency resembling cash, enhanced with smart features and without the friction of physical money.

G+D said that it has been designed from the very beginning to allow for consecutive offline payments.

Filia works both on smartphones and hardware wallets, can provide full privacy at the payment layer and supports programmable use cases.

To achieve that, a different approach from the standard DLT platforms were taken.

The company added that they do not record account balances or transaction metadata on a blockchain, but only the validity of a particular token together with its denomination.

G+D said in a post,

“We are over the moon to be one of the three winners of the Global CBDC Challenge initiated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)! Under the slogan “Building a truly inclusive public digital currency”, we presented our Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) solution Filia, which focuses on secure, consecutive offline payments. Our solution helps central banks not only build the necessary infrastructures for a digital currency, it also empowers everyone to participate in the digital economy.”