Key Highlights
- Singapore’s MAS has expanded its BLOOM initiative to include Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand as policymaker members.
- Industry membership has grown sharply, with new members such as Visa, Mastercard, Ripple, Airwallex, and the World Bank Group joining existing members such as DBS, J.P. Morgan, Coinbase, and Standard Chartered.
- BLOOM will focus on various areas, including cross-jurisdictional acceptance and settlement.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on Friday that Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) have joined its BLOOM initiative as policymaker members. The move marks a significant expansion of regional cooperation on the cross-border use of digital money.
Through BLOOM, the three central banks will work with industry players in their jurisdictions to develop common approaches for accepting, exchanging, and settling different forms of digital money across institutions, blockchains, and borders.
What is the BLOOM Initiative
BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. It is a public-private collaborative programme launched by MAS in October 2025. The initiative aims to advance next-generation settlement infrastructure for both domestic and cross-border payments and financial transactions.
It builds directly on Project Orchid, which began in 2021 and explored use cases for a digital Singapore dollar along with the supporting infrastructure. More than ten trials under Project Orchid produced industry reports and commercial offerings that now feed into BLOOM’s work.
BLOOM focuses on enabling settlement assets such as tokenised forms of commercial bank money, known as tokenised deposits, and stablecoins that meet regulatory standards. It covers G10 and Asian currencies and targets wholesale use cases, including corporate treasury management, trade finance, and agentic payments.
New Participants Join the Initiative, Including World Bank Group
Alongside the two central banks, BLOOM’s industry membership has expanded. New participants include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa, and the World Bank Group.
Existing members include Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Circle, Coinbase, DBS, J.P. Morgan, Kasikornbank, OCBC, Partior, Schroders, Standard Chartered, StraitsX, Stripe, Temasek, UOB, and Xweave.
The World Bank Group’s involvement as a multilateral development bank will bring global experience in payment systems modernisation, cross-border payments, and financial inclusion, with particular attention to the needs of developing economies.
Settlement, Interoperability and Programmable Controls Top the Agenda
According to the official announcement, participants will concentrate on three practical areas. First, acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions. This examines how financial institutions accept different forms of digital money for cross-border transactions, how counterparties enter into contracts, and how those transactions are ultimately settled across institutions and markets in different countries.
Interoperability across digital money arrangements is another major priority of this initiative. Work here centres on technical and operational methods that allow different digital money systems to operate smoothly across networks, infrastructures, and borders. Third, programmable controls. These include safeguards such as identity verification, sanctions screening, and transaction controls built into digital money transactions. An additional area of exploration covers agentic payments, in which AI agents execute transactions within pre-defined limits and conditions.
By developing shared implementation frameworks and aligning commercial and operating arrangements, BLOOM seeks to reduce the need for financial institutions to negotiate separate deals with every counterparty or market. This should lower implementation costs and shorten the time needed to bring new services to market.
Central Banks Boost Efforts for Smooth Cross-Border Payments
Leong Sing Chiong, Deputy Managing Director for Markets and Development at MAS, said: “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. We welcome the contributions from Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank of Thailand as we work together to support more seamless cross-border financial transactions.”
Aznan bin Abdul Aziz, Deputy Governor of BNM, noted that frictionless cross-border payments using multiple forms of digital money are moving closer to reality and that BNM looks forward to exploring this future through BLOOM.
Dr Daranee Saeju, Deputy Governor for Payment Systems Stability and Financial Services Supervision at the Bank of Thailand, said the collaboration will help inform forward-looking regulatory approaches for tokenised money, particularly in cross-border payments and wholesale settlement, while ensuring oversight remains prudent and responsive to emerging risks.
The expansion comes as financial institutions and jurisdictions develop separate digital money use cases.
Central bank participation ensures that public policy and regulatory considerations, including the application of international standards and local supervisory expectations, remain central to the work while still allowing for differences in national requirements.
Entities interested in joining BLOOM can express interest through the official MAS process. Banks, financial institutions, and network operators may also conduct trials, including those involving public blockchains.
