Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank of Thailand Join MAS-Led BLOOM Initiative on Cross-Border Digital Money

The three central banks will work with industry on how tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins are accepted, exchanged and settled across borders. Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group have also joined.

Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank of Thailand Join MAS-Led BLOOM Initiative on Cross-Border Digital Money — editorial cover artwork
Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank of Thailand Join MAS-Led BLOOM Initiative on Cross-Border Digital Money — editorial cover artwork

By Wei Jie Tan, Journalist, Asia Markets

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on 23 October 2026 that Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) have joined its BLOOM initiative as policymaker members. BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. Through it, the three central banks will work with industry in their jurisdictions on common approaches to the cross-border use of digital money, including how different forms of it are accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and borders.

MAS also said BLOOM's participation has expanded to include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group.

This is a policy and industry collaboration. MAS did not announce a live payment service, a pilot transaction or a timeline.

What the participants will work on

MAS lists three areas:

  • Acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions: how financial institutions accept different forms of digital money for cross-border transactions, how counterparties contract with one another, and how transactions are finally settled across markets.
  • Interoperability: the technical and operational approaches that let different digital money arrangements work across networks, infrastructures and borders.
  • Programmable controls: safeguards such as identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls.

MAS describes BLOOM as covering tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins across payments, treasury and trade finance. It says the aim is to build implementation frameworks and align commercial and operating arrangements, so that institutions do not need a separate arrangement with each counterparty or market. Central bank participation is meant to ensure public policy and regulatory considerations are built in from the start.

The World Bank Group joins as a multilateral development bank. MAS says it will bring the perspective of developing economies.

What the central banks said

Leong Sing Chiong, MAS Deputy Managing Director (Markets and Development), said collaboration is needed "to address practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability."

BNM Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz said cross-border payments using multiple digital monies are "now closer to a tangible reality than a far-fetched fantasy."

BOT Deputy Governor Daranee Saeju said BLOOM would help inform "forward-looking regulatory approaches for tokenised money, particularly in cross-border payments and wholesale settlement," while keeping oversight "prudent, proportionate, and responsive to evolving risks."

Why it matters

Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand already link their retail fast-payment systems: Singapore's PayNow connects with Malaysia's DuitNow and Thailand's PromptPay. BLOOM addresses a different problem. As banks issue tokenised deposits and licensed firms issue stablecoins, each new form of money risks needing its own bilateral rulebook across each border. Bringing two neighbouring regulators in at the design stage makes it more likely that a Malaysian or Thai bank could accept a Singapore-regulated token, or the reverse, under rules that all three supervisors recognise.

The new private participants span the main ways money moves across these corridors. They include the two card networks, regional wallets (ShopeePay), a large Malaysian bank (Maybank), cross-border payment firms (Airwallex, Nium) and Ripple, which issues the RLUSD stablecoin. The Block reports that Ripple joined BLOOM in March to test trade payments using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger.

The constraint is time. BLOOM produces frameworks and operating arrangements, not a launched network. Each central bank also keeps its own rules: MAS says the work will allow "for differences in local requirements."

Sources

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