Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) and Global FinTech Institute signed an MOU at the recently concluded Global Web3 Eco Innovation Summit 2022 to collaborate on education, research, training & development and dissemination of knowledge that concerns the financial empowerment of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (“MSMEs”).
As Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief Fintech Officer of MAS had shared, the SME Financial Empowerment (SFE) Programme goes beyond education, through the use of verifiable credentials and starting with education, to solve the problem of access to credit by MSMEs. The roll-out of this Programme will become a live use case of how Web3 can be used to solve real world problems.
The SFE aims to educate micro, small & medium enterprises (MSMEs) in foundational digital financial literacy skills, enable them to gain good understanding of cross border financial services relevant to MSMEs, and help them thrive in the post-pandemic digital economy. Earlier in June, the SFE has already been rolled out by MAS, International Finance Corporation & United Nations Development Programme with market partners in Asia and Africa, starting with Ghana, India, the Philippines and Singapore. The programme expects to benefit more than 400,000 MSMEs across both regions.
In this partnership, GFI will work with MAS to architect & jointly managed the SFE programme; while SUSS, as the founding academic partner of SFE, will provide academic leadership and open academic governance for the SFE programme.
The SFE is run on a digital portal operated by Proxtera , and courses are offered for as low as $1 only. Upon completion of the course assessments, all participants of the SFE programme will receive Knowledge Certificates issued by GFI , with the support of SUSS.
Read the official release about SFE here: https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2022/mas-ifc-and-undp-launch-global-programme-for-msme-financial-literacy-and-empowerment
Register for the SFE programme here: https://www.smefe.org/