The Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) has selected American financial technology solutions provider, MonetaGo, to develop an interoperable tool to unite information silos between banks and help better combat duplicate financing fraud.

The Trade Finance Registry (TFR) will securely house records of all trade transactions from foreign and local banking institutions in Singapore on a single database, promising to provide accurate sources of information to validate trade data.

This will eliminate the need for banks to rely on the due diligence of borrowing customers and transaction checks, with documents often susceptible to forgery and falsification, and will reduce the risk of duplicate financing by different lenders.

“The ABS is committed to upholding the integrity of and confidence in Singapore’s trade finance sector, and the TFR provides a very important layer of security to prevent multiple financing on the same trade transactions with multiple banks,” Director of the ABS Ong Ai Boon said.

“This leads to greater trust among both financiers and borrowers. We are pleased to have selected MonetaGo to develop the TFR, taking advantage of their experience in this niche area and the use of their global hash registry to detect fraud across national borders.”

MonetaGo has also partnered with Singaporean fintech, GUUD, to build the user interface of the TFR system, which will leverage cryptographic hashing technology to help enforce compliance with financial and data protection regulations.

“This successful win of the national industry mandate further cements the recognition of MonetaGo as the world’s foremost provider of trade finance deduplication technology,” said Jesse Chenard, founder and chief executive of MonetaGo.

“The MonetaGo-built TFR will significantly improve efficiencies in trade finance in Singapore, mitigating the risk of double financing, and ensuring confidence can be upheld globally in trade fraud mitigation.”