Amazon to test escrow service in digital money pilot

Based on proposed common protocols, purpose-bound money is designed to work with different ledger technology and forms of money.

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Amazon will join banks and fintech players participating in various pilot use cases to test the use of “purpose-bound” digital money. 

Specifically, the US e-commerce giant will work with Fazz and Grab to offer escrow arrangements for online retail orders, where payment will be released to merchants only after customers receive their purchases. 

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The trial is one of several to be rolled out in Singapore, following the release of a technical whitepaper that details the concept of purpose-bound money. The document proposes software prototypes that specify conditions for the use of digital money, such as central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), tokenized bank deposits, and stablecoins on a distributed ledger, according to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which published the whitepaper.

With purpose-bound money, senders can specify conditions such as the validity period and types of stores when transfers are made across different systems. 

“Purpose-bound monies are bearer instruments, which are transferrable on a peer-to-peer basis without intermediaries,” the whitepaper notes. “[They] contain digital money as a store of value and programming logic denoting its use based on programmed conditions. Once the conditions are met, digital money is released, and it becomes unbounded once again.”

The whitepaper details a four-tiered technology stack used in a digital asset-based network, including an access layer and a platform layer. The programming logic of purpose-bound money, for instance, is characterized as a service, while digital money sits on the asset layer. When digital money is bound, it moves between the service and asset layers. 

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Based on the proposed common protocols, purpose-bound money is designed to work with different ledger technology and forms of money. This standardized format will enable users to access digital money using the e-wallet provider of their choice, MAS said. 

The Singapore central bank said the whitepaper comprises technical specifications that detail the digital money’s lifecycle, spanning issuance to redemption, as well as the protocol to interface with digital currencies backing it. The document also contains business and operating models outlining how arrangements can be programmed, so that money is transferred only when service obligations or terms of use have been fulfilled. 

Available via MAS’ website, the whitepaper was developed in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund, Banca d’Italia, and Bank of Korea, alongside various financial institutions and fintech firms, including OCBC Bank, Onyx by J.P. Morgan, and DBS Bank. Amazon, Fazz, and Grab also contributed to the whitepaper.

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Fazz and Grab will participate in another trial with three other financial institutions to test the use of purpose-bound money in facilitating cashback and other incentives to customers. This pilot use case aims to reduce friction for merchants, such as manual reconciliation of sales proceeds and time needed to onboard new sales campaigns. 

The whitepaper further supports MAS’ Project Orchid, under which source codes and software prototypes are released for public access, as part of efforts to drive the development and adoption of digital money. Governments, financial institutions, and organizations can tap the open source codes and prototypes to facilitate their own research and experiments, MAS said. 

The industry regulator in May last year also unveiled plans to pilot asset tokenization and assess the feasibility of autonomous trading, using smart contracts powered by blockchain.

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