Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) have joined BLOOM, the Monetary Authority of Singapore's settlement initiative for tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins, as policymaker members, MAS announced on Oct. 23 . The three central banks will work with industry participants in their jurisdictions on common approaches to how different forms of digital money are accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and borders.
MAS also named nine new participants: Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. They join the initial cohort announced at BLOOM's launch in October 2025 , which included Circle, Coinbase, DBS, OCBC, UOB, Partior, Stripe, Ant International and StraitsX. MAS said the World Bank Group would bring the perspective and needs of developing economies to the initiative.
The cross-border work covers three areas. The first is acceptance and settlement, meaning how institutions accept different digital monies, how counterparties contract with one another and where transactions ultimately settle. The second is interoperability between digital money arrangements running on different networks and infrastructure. The third is programmable controls, including identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction limits built into the transactions themselves. MAS said aligning commercial and operating arrangements would spare financial institutions from setting up separate arrangements with each counterparty or market.
"The future of finance will involve multiple forms of digital money operating across different institutions and markets," said Leong Sing Chiong, MAS deputy managing director for markets and development. He said collaboration would be needed "to address practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability."
The Bank of Thailand struck a more cautious note. 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 the central bank's oversight "prudent, proportionate, and responsive to evolving risks."
BLOOM grew out of Project Orchid , MAS's digital Singapore dollar programme, which ran more than 10 trials after its 2021 start. The three central banks already cooperate on payments plumbing elsewhere. Together with India and the Philippines, they are founding members of Nexus Global Payments , the Singapore-incorporated body set up in April 2025 to link domestic instant payment systems.
The release sets no timeline and names no pilot transactions, so BLOOM's near-term output will be implementation frameworks and operating standards. The test will be whether banks such as Maybank and DBS start settling cross-border flows in tokenised deposits or regulated stablecoins under those frameworks, and whether Malaysian and Thai regulators adjust their own rules to accommodate them.