Sapphiro Shares System is a new financial product of its own category with close resemblence to Securities Token Offering,
Under that guideline, our product is categorised as a "Capital Markets Product" and requires the Capital Markets Services Licence. However, MAS also has a FinTech regulatory sandbox system to encourage innovation, with their guidelines published.
Quoting from MAS FinTech Regulatory Sandbox Guidelines —
In circumstances where it is less clear whether a new financial service complies with legal and regulatory requirements, some FIs or start-ups may err on the side of caution and choose not to implement it. This outcome is undesirable as promising innovations may be stifled and this may result in missed opportunities.MAS is encouraging more FinTech experimentation so that promising innovations can be tested in the market and have a chance for wider adoption, in Singapore and abroad.
We would also to quote Singapore minister in-charge of Smart Nation's speech on InnovFest unBound 2016: Big Idea: Building A Smart Nation speech (22:40 — 23:50):
If any of you have an idea or product or service in the financial industry, you can start up. You don't need approval from MAS. You can do anything you like, as long as you don't cheat anyone. You will not be smothered by regulations, until you become big enough to actually be a threat to the financial system — but by that time if you are so big, you are a success. You don't need to apply for license or permit. Test your idea, roll your idea, and we only take regulatory interest in you if you become big and successful enough to actually be a major player on the financial system as a whole. And this again, gives you opportunities. You don't need to apply for licenses, you don't need to apply for permits. You are free to start up and grow as quickly as you can,
It is with the knowledge of the various applicable guidelines above that we will kickstart the development of Sapphiro Shares System, and start growing it to probably 50 or 100 users (shareholders of Sapphiro-listed business entities shares) until we feel comfortable enough that our product is a working functional product to which we will then apply to be officially regulated within the MAS regulatory sandbox for a specific duration of 1 or 2 years. We will apply for Capital Markets Services Licenses before the end of the FinTech regulatory sandbox duration.
All business entities listed within Sapphiro Shares are intended subsidiaries of "Conglomerate of Sapphiro", or our affiliates. Most of the business entities listed here operate in Singapore, but there will also be entities that operate in Malaysia or Taiwan. (To which we will adhere to different guidelines accordingly, with Malaysia's FinTech regulations more retricted than Singapore's)
Sapphiro Shares System is a shares/securities-based financial product where users can purchase newly created shares of startup businesses and brands, purchase shares from existing shareholders, view their entire sapphiro-listed shares portfolio, as well as knowing their partial personal net worth derived from their sapphiro-listed shares — based on real time calculations of the total "market cap" valuation of the startup business entities listed in Sapphiro Shares System.
Sapphiro Shares System is complementary to our other projects, Sapphiro Payment and Sapphiro Mints.
Integrity of the numerical values stored in Sapphiro Shares System are protected using cryptography hashing algorithms.
