Malaysia and Thailand Join Singapore's BLOOM Digital Money Initiative

Two Southeast Asian central banks have joined a Singapore-led effort to advance cross-border digital money infrastructure. Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand are now policymaker members of the Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency initiative, known as BLOOM.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced the expansion, stating the three regulators will collaborate with financial institutions in their home markets to establish shared frameworks for digital money transactions across borders.

BLOOM functions as a public-private forum bringing together central banks, commercial banks, payment networks, and technology companies. The initiative concentrates on enabling cross-border use of tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins.

The framework examines how different types of digital money can be accepted, exchanged, and settled when moving between jurisdictions and institutional systems. It seeks to align with international regulatory standards while respecting each country's specific supervisory rules.

Participants now include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa, and the World Bank Group.

The initiative is organised around three operational priorities:

• Cross-border acceptance and settlement, which defines counterparty contracting terms and final settlement mechanisms between institutions in different countries
• Technical interoperability, establishing protocols that allow diverse digital asset networks and settlement infrastructures to communicate
• Programmable controls, embedding automated regulatory compliance measures such as identity verification, sanctions screening, and transaction rules directly into digital payment flows

By creating standardised operating and commercial arrangements, the project aims to eliminate the need for institutions to negotiate individual bilateral connections with every counterparty or foreign market.

This approach is designed to reduce integration costs and accelerate deployment timelines for market participants, while maintaining regulatory oversight across jurisdictions.

Leong Sing Chiong, deputy managing director for markets and development at MAS, said the financial system's future 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.

Leong welcomed the contributions from Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand as the group works toward more seamless cross-border financial transactions.