A potential future digital SGD will need to interact with different forms of digital assets and be interoperable across different financial infrastructures. This report begins with an overview of Project Orchid, the motivation for programmable money and how it supports a digital asset ecosystem. The report introduces the concept of Purpose Bound Money (PBM) and the potential benefits of programmable digital currency through illustrative use cases contributed by industry participants and government agencies.

Central banks, including MAS, would have to assess which combination of financial infrastructure and technology best aligns with its policy goals. An important consideration studied in this report was interoperability with other forms of digital assets through PBM as the common interface layer. Although MAS does not see an urgent case for retail CBDC, it is envisioned that the study of potential use cases for a programmable digital SGD and the infrastructure required, would enable MAS and the financial services ecosystem in Singapore to develop capabilities to support a retail CBDC should the need arises.

The subsequent chapters discuss solution approaches for implementing PBM through a common interface and how it might work with various underlying medium of exchanges, mainly CBDCs, tokenised deposits and stablecoins.

The report discusses the design considerations for implementing PBM and features four case studies based on ongoing trials that have been initiated to support the experiments of PBM and a digital SGD. The trials studied the feasibility of public blockchain and their equivalent private implementations, though their inclusion is for experimental purposes only, and should not be inferred as an endorsement on their suitability as financial market infrastructures.

The report concludes by providing a summary of lessons learnt and a roadmap for future work under Project Orchid.