MAS and IMDA unveil global solutions hub to foster SME digitisation

Business sans Borders will provide digital services and connections to SMEs to boost local and global trade.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) have partnered with six private sector firms including MasterCard, Yellow Pages and GlobalLinker to create a Proof of Concept (POC) hybrid business data and digital solutions hub to foster small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) digitalisation, an announcement revealed.

Dubbed as Business sans Borders, the artificial intelligence (AI) driven initiative aims to provide a wide set of digital services and connections to enhance domestic and international trade opportunities for SMEs whilst promoting interoperability between SME ecosystems.

SMEs continue to face friction and challenges in achieving access to cross-border trade opportunities and financial services, whilst solution providers ranging from logistics, professional services and financing or payments face challenges in reaching out to these SMEs, the announcement noted.

“The POC aims to provide a platform to address these challenges and bridge the gaps,” the agencies said in its joint statement. “The POC will also seek further involvement from interested startups as well as established industry players in developing technical frameworks and potential governance structures for the exchange of anonymised SME data.”

The announcement also revealed that Business sans Borders would provide a ‘sandbox environment’ to accelerate testing and delivery of new services for SMEs.

“SMEs are an under-tapped source for considerable economic growth in many countries,” MAS chief fintech officer Sopnendu Mohanty said. “Business sans Borders aims to ignite a sea of change in the way SMEs around the world can easily connect digitally with each other.”

MAS and IMDA revealed that the initiatives certain features such as its multi-ecosystem sandbox containing anonymised SME data, services app store for promotion purposes and smart AI engine for seamless matching between SMEs across the landscape will be developed and tested by Q1 2019.

“This joint initiative to explore cross-border data flows and services has the potential to give our SMEs a digital advantage in the global marketplace and discover new trading opportunities,” IMDA chief executive Tan Kiat How added.