The ASEAN Financial Innovation Network (AFIN), a not-for-profit entity jointly formed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the ASEAN Bankers Association, has partnered with R3, the global enterprise software firm, to enable banks and FinTechs to build and test Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) applications, and drive its innovation and adoption globally.
Through R3 and AFIN’s collaboration, AFIN will launch a new digital currency sandbox in APIX, and R3 will be the first partner organization to provide APIs for building applications using Digital Currencies. Select APIs of R3 Sandbox for Digital Currencies, a learning and development platform for CBDC experimentation used by global financial institutions and regulatory bodies, will be listed on the API Exchange (APIX) from August 2021. In addition, developers can create and edit code, integrating R3’s APIs and others across different solution domains in APIX’s marketplace by leveraging the cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE). This collaboration will provide financial institutions and FinTechs on APIX with tools to build CBDC applications for new payment rails and multi-currency payment systems.
Pieter Franken, Independent Advisor, AFIN said, “Three years after its launch, the APIX platform has scaled by leaps and bounds. Today it is enabling the FinTech ecosystem to provide new impetus to the deployment of digital currencies in everyday transactions globally. With R3’s APIs on APIX, we will see financial institutions and FinTechs designing new CBDC solutions collaboratively and deploying them as future-ready enterprises.”
