Taking a stand — Singapore Fintech Festival 2019
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For the second year in a row we attended Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) and it exceeded all expectations. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has married DeepTech and FinTech by combining SFF with the Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SWITCH). Thus, the event comprised of more than 60,000 attendees and nearly 1,000 exhibitors!
One of the key themes was the Future of Finance, exploring the innovation that can improve the market infrastructure. A lot of attention was dedicated to the potential of blockchain. More than 35%+ of companies at the event were in the blockchain financial markets space, which is a great indication of the potential for this area to shape the future of financial services.
NZ Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) put together a great exhibition that enabled Centrality to wave the NZ FinTech flag on a global level along with 11 other kiwi companies. It was incredible to be a part of the NZ delegation and connect with talented teams across the industry.
To open the event, NZTE introduced the Haka — a ceremonial dance in Māori culture. Plenty of attendees stayed to watch this spectacular ceremony, learn about the culture and meet the New Zealand contingent of businesses on the stand.
SFF ran for three days, which enabled us to showcase our technology and the seamless integration of our tech with our ecosystem DApps to a huge audience. We took attendees through the projects in our ecosystem, including Centrality FinTech, Centrapay, Sylo, Trackback and PLUG. Unsurprisingly, the interest in blockchain is growing rapidly and there was a noticeable difference in the understanding of blockchain technology from the attendees, in comparison to last year.
After the exhibition, we attended an HSBC presentation that covered their recent market announcement to build a Singapore-based commercial paper market on the blockchain in conjunction with Singapore Stock Exchange and Temasek (Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund). We are exploring how we can contribute our commercial paper on a blockchain research and development as part of that project.
We also got a chance to meet with RBNZ Assistant Governor, Simone Robbers, and discuss the future of programmable money in New Zealand. RBNZ and Centrality FinTech agreed to continue with a regular engagement plan where we share know-how in this space and keep RBNZ abreast of market developments from around the world.
Finally, we toured the Development Bank of Singapore’s Innovation Centre and learned about a recent project they had in India. After identifying a local retailer who had biometric verification as part of their customer experience, they were able to build a bank with a 2,000,000 customer base off of that foundation. This highlighted how identity is a key foundation of blockchain financial markets and therefore helps validate the value that might come from the work we are doing with Digital Identity New Zealand and KYC New Zealand.
It was an incredible experience for the Centrality family to connect with local businesses and be a part of the movement towards a better future of finance. It’s great to see that more and more Singapore finance services companies are exploring the potential of blockchain technology, so we look forward to coming back to Singapore to continue building strong partnerships with local businesses.
