Malaysia and Thailand Join Singapore's BLOOM Push for Common Digital Money Rules

Three central banks tackle the practical barriers to digital money

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined Singapore's BLOOM initiative as policymaker members, bringing three central banks together to develop common approaches for moving digital money across borders. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the expansion on 23 October 2026, alongside the addition of eight commercial participants and the World Bank Group.

The work centres on a practical problem: money issued on one digital system needs to be accepted, exchanged and settled on another, sometimes under a different country's rules. BLOOM will examine those connections for tokenised bank deposits and regulated stablecoins, with applications in payments, corporate cash management and trade finance.

MAS's 23 October statement identifies three priorities: acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions, interoperability between digital money arrangements, and programmable controls such as identity verification and sanctions screening.

For banks and payment companies, the intended benefit is less repeated work when connecting to another institution or market. MAS says common implementation frameworks and better aligned commercial and operating arrangements could lower implementation costs and shorten the time needed to introduce services.

Leong Sing Chiong, MAS deputy managing director for markets and development, described why the initiative brings regulators and businesses into the same discussions:

The future of finance will involve multiple forms of digital money operating across different institutions and markets. To fully harness the benefits of using digital money, collaboration among policymakers and industry participants will be needed to address practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability.

Malaysia and Thailand will work with industry participants in their own jurisdictions. Their involvement brings local supervisory requirements into the design of the arrangements, alongside the technical and commercial decisions made by participating firms.

What kinds of money will BLOOM connect?

Tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins are among the settlement assets BLOOM is designed to support. A tokenised deposit represents commercial bank money on a digital platform. The bank still owes that money to its customer, while the platform provides a way to record and transfer it.

A stablecoin is a digital token designed to keep a stable value against a reference asset, commonly a currency. BLOOM's scope covers stablecoins that meet regulatory expectations. The initiative therefore brings together different forms of privately issued money, each with its own issuer and operating arrangements.

Settlement is the completion of a payment obligation: the stage at which the parties have delivered what they owe. Sending a payment instruction, exchanging one currency for another and completing settlement can involve different institutions and systems.

BLOOM aims to support G10 and Asian currencies. Its objectives cover domestic and international financial transactions, while the cooperation announced by the three central banks focuses on the use of digital money across borders.

How the initiative developed

BLOOM builds on Project Orchid, MAS's earlier work exploring uses for a digital Singapore dollar and the infrastructure needed to support it. MAS says those trials produced industry reports, and participating financial institutions have turned lessons from the work into commercial products.

The development from an earlier Singapore dollar project to a broader initiative involving several currencies and regulators has taken place in stages:

• Before BLOOM: Project Orchid explored digital Singapore dollar applications and supporting infrastructure.
• October 2025: BLOOM launched to advance settlement infrastructure involving digital money.
• 23 October 2026: MAS announced that Malaysia's and Thailand's central banks had joined as policymaker members, alongside an expansion in commercial and development bank participation.

MAS's BLOOM initiative page, published on 23 October 2026, sets out the broader objectives, membership and work areas. It also invites institutions interested in collaboration or trials, including trials using public blockchains.

Acceptance means agreeing who can receive what

BLOOM's first work area examines how financial institutions accept different forms of digital money, contract with each other and complete settlement across markets. A counterparty is simply the institution or person on the other side of a transaction.

A bank receiving a digital payment needs arrangements covering the asset it accepts, the obligations of the institution sending it and the process for completing the transfer. When a payment crosses a border, those arrangements also need to fit the requirements of the markets involved.

MAS wants to reduce the need to build a separate arrangement for every counterparty or market. Common frameworks could give participating institutions a shared starting point for contracts and operations, reducing the amount of work repeated each time a new connection is made.

For a company moving cash between countries or paying an overseas supplier, the intended improvement is a payment service that institutions can introduce with fewer separate integration and contracting exercises. MAS gave no implementation deadline, quantified cost savings or schedule for individual payment routes in the announcement.

Connecting networks takes more than a technical link

BLOOM's second work area is interoperability, meaning the ability of different systems to work together. Participants will examine the technical and operational approaches needed for digital money to move across networks, infrastructure and national borders.

A transaction may need to pass between a bank's tokenised deposit system, a stablecoin arrangement and a payment network. Each connection requires agreement about how instructions are exchanged and how the institutions involved carry out their responsibilities.

Acceptance and interoperability address related parts of that process. Acceptance concerns the money an institution is prepared to receive and the terms for doing so. Interoperability concerns how the systems carrying that money communicate and operate together.

MAS says the work will consider relevant international standards and supervisory expectations in each jurisdiction, while allowing for differences in local requirements. The proposed common approaches therefore need to work across borders while accommodating national rules.

Controls will sit inside the payment process

BLOOM's third priority is programmable controls. These are checks or restrictions built into the way a digital transaction operates. MAS names identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls as examples.

Identity verification checks who is involved in a transaction. Sanctions screening checks parties against applicable restrictions. Transaction controls can govern whether a payment is allowed to proceed under specified conditions.

The Bank of Thailand sees the initiative as a way to inform its approach to tokenised money, particularly for international payments and wholesale settlement. Wholesale transactions generally involve institutions and businesses moving money, rather than an individual making an everyday shop purchase.

Daranee Saeju, the Bank of Thailand's deputy governor for payment systems stability and financial services supervision, described the balance the bank intends to maintain:

The initiative also allows us to carefully explore emerging innovations, while ensuring our oversight remains prudent, proportionate, and responsive to evolving risks.

The participation of the three central banks gives those regulatory concerns a place in the development process. MAS says public policy and regulatory considerations will be taken into account as the approaches are developed.

Corporate cash, trade finance and AI payments

BLOOM participants are advancing applications in payments, treasury and trade finance. Corporate treasury management involves looking after a company's cash, including where it is held and when it needs to move. Trade finance provides payment and financing arrangements that help buyers and sellers conduct trade.

These uses give the initiative a business focus. A company operating in several countries may need to move funds between accounts, pay suppliers and manage obligations in different currencies. The work on acceptance, settlement and network connections addresses the infrastructure supporting those activities.

MAS's initiative page also lists agentic payments as a work area alongside the three priorities in the announcement. This involves artificial intelligence agents executing transactions within predefined limits and conditions, with appropriate safeguards.

The stated aim is to reduce manual payment management and optimise costs by timing transfers for favourable conditions. In practical terms, software would carry out an authorised payment when the conditions set for it are met. The safeguards and limits are part of the proposed arrangement.

Who is participating?

MAS's membership page lists 24 industry members, three policymaker members and the World Bank Group, making 28 organisations. The eight newly announced commercial participants are Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay and Visa.

The 16 existing industry participants are Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Circle, Coinbase, DBS, J.P. Morgan, Kasikornbank, OCBC, Partior, Schroders, Standard Chartered, StraitsX, Stripe, Temasek, UOB and Xweave. Adding eight to that group increases commercial participation by 50%, from 16 to 24 organisations.

The membership brings banks, payment networks, digital asset businesses, technology providers and investment organisations into a shared initiative. Their involvement spans the institutions issuing money, the networks carrying transactions and the businesses building services around them.

The World Bank Group participates as a multilateral development bank, a separate membership category from the commercial firms. MAS says it will contribute experience in payment systems modernisation, international payments and financial inclusion, bringing the perspectives and needs of developing economies into the work.

What Malaysia and Thailand bring to the work

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand join MAS as policymakers responsible for considering how the arrangements fit their respective markets. Their participation extends the regulatory discussions beyond Singapore as firms develop applications intended to operate internationally.

Aznan bin Abdul Aziz, deputy governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, expressed the Malaysian central bank's interest in exploring payments using several forms of digital money:

BNM looks forward to exploring such a future through the BLOOM initiative with all participating central banks and industry partners.

Malaysia's statement expresses interest in more seamless payments, while Thailand's statement places particular attention on supervision and evolving risks. MAS links both aims through common frameworks intended to make digital money easier to use across institutions and markets.

For participating businesses, the next work involves turning those objectives into practical arrangements: deciding what money can be accepted, connecting the systems that transfer it and applying the required controls. Lower costs and quicker service development are the benefits MAS is seeking through that process.

Key Points

• Malaysia's and Thailand's central banks joined BLOOM as policymaker members on 23 October 2026.
• The initiative supports work on tokenised bank deposits and stablecoins that meet regulatory expectations.
• Its core priorities are international acceptance and settlement, interoperability and programmable controls.
• MAS lists 24 industry members, three central banks and the World Bank Group.
• Applications include corporate treasury management, trade finance and payments, with AI agent payments also under exploration.
• Common frameworks aim to reduce repeated contracting and integration work while allowing for local regulatory requirements.