The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Bank Indonesia (BI) have declared the winners of the G20 TechSprint 2022 challenge, organised under a partnership between the bank and the BIS Innovation Hub.

The initiative challenged teams to create “innovative technological solutions” to promote the development and use of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) in three categories, including “building effective and robust means to issue, distribute and transfer CBDCs”, “enabling financial inclusion” and “improving interoperability”.

Singapore-based Dragonfly Fintech won the first category with their End-to-End CBDC Solution, a blockchain ledger with special features including a mobile wallet and digital identity platform.

Bitt-IDEMIA from the United States topped the second category with their tool, the Secure Offline CBDC Payment Solution, creating a platform that allows monetary bodies to create CBDCs and enable offline payments.

Singaporean company Partior’s Project Naucratis: Enabling Connectivity and Interoperability for mCBDC came first in the third category, as its blockchain-based multi-CBDC network can support both account-based and token-based CBDC systems.

“This TechSprint has allowed us to improve our practical work on CBDCs,” Cecilia Skingsley, Head of the BIS Innovation Hub, said.

“These technological solutions add to the central banks’ toolbox and provide a springboard for further development of CBDCs. Our heartiest congratulations to the winning teams.”

The judging panel of 11 experts was put together by Bank Indonesia to analyse developed prototypes from 21 shortlisted teams.

The judges were:

• Professor Duan Jin-Chuan, Executive Director at Asian Institute of Digital Finance
• Katie Fortune, Senior Manager, CBDC Unit at Bank of England
• Lyle Horsley, Divisional Head, Fintech Unit at South African Reserve Bank
• Anneke Kosse, Senior Economist at the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure
• Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at Monetary Authority of Singapore
• Mu Changchun, Head of Digital Currency Institute at People’s Bank of China
• Iota Nassr, Policy Analyst at Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs, OECD
• Harish Natarajan, Lead Financial Sector Specialist, Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation at World Bank
• Sandra Ro, CEO of Global Blockchain Business Council
• Pia Roman Tayag, Director of the Office of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development (UNSGSA)
• Katie Ann Wilson, Managing Director at Digital Monetary Institute, OMFIF