The innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm of Standard Chartered has achieved a significant milestone in cross-border payments and financial innovation.
SC Ventures took home the SBR Technology Excellence Awards 2024 for the Blockchain – Financial Technology category for its successful completion of the first Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN) proof-of-concept (PoC) that addresses the challenges in public interoperability in cross-border payments.
In partnership with Deutsche Bank, SC Ventures set up a development environment for the PoC and leveraged UDPN software development kits and application programming interfaces to create decentralised identities and linked digital currency wallets. SC Ventures then initiated multiple transfers and swaps of synthetic USDC and EURS to the digital currency wallets of Deutsche Bank.
The two major international financial institutions leveraged UDPN’s technology and smart contracts to provide interoperability between regulated stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDC). UDPN was selected because it can address challenging dynamic financial landscapes and adapts to regulatory changes and evolving market demands.
UDPN offers a highly scalable architecture that enables cross-border transactions in minutes instead of days. It also removes interoperability challenges between different technologies within the digital currency environment. For cross-border payments, infrastructure such as UDPN provides tangible impact including improved transaction speed, cost reduction, and enhanced security.
For SC Ventures, the POC provides strong evidence that digital assets will likely play a key role in the future financial landscape. This successful partnership with Deutsche Bank gives both financial institutions deeper insights into how digital assets can shape the future, and play a proactive role in driving innovation within the evolving landscape of cross-border payments. The PoC also unlocks potential economic value in emerging digital currencies.
Going forward, SC Ventures and other participants for UDPN POCs plan to experiment with other use cases, such as compliance, payment gateways, CBDC circulation, and universal wallet integrations in a commercial and regulated setting.
“The collaboration envisions a future where digital money moves frictionlessly and at low cost between transacting parties. Digital currencies are proposed to be efficient and facilitate seamless local and cross-border transactions, becoming increasingly integrated into the regulated financial system,” said Thorsten Neumann, Ventures Technology Lead at SC Ventures.
SBR Technology Excellence Awards recognises exceptional companies in Singapore that are riding the digital disruption wave and leading the technological revolution and digital journeys of their respective industries.
