Malaysia and Thailand’s central banks join Singapore’s BLOOM push to settle cross-border payments with stablecoins

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined Singapore’s BLOOM initiative on Friday, giving the Monetary Authority of Singapore-led project three Southeast Asian central banks as it tests stablecoins and tokenized deposits for cross-border settlement alongside Visa, Mastercard, Ripple, Coinbase and J.P. Morgan.

Known formally as Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, BLOOM is a public-private collaboration led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). It is designed to help financial institutions coordinate digital money payments across jurisdictions without having to establish separate arrangements with every counterparty or market.

According to MAS, the initiative could help participating institutions bring financial services to market more quickly while reducing the complexity of cross-border settlement infrastructure.

The participation of Malaysia and Thailand adds a broader regional dimension to the project. Rather than treating digital money payments as isolated domestic systems, the initiative aims to explore how compatible arrangements can support transactions across national borders.

However, the announcement concerns participation in the initiative, not the launch of a fully operational regional stablecoin payment network. Its practical impact will depend on the development, testing and adoption of the proposed settlement arrangements.

How BLOOM could reduce cross-border payment costs

Cross-border payments often involve multiple financial institutions, intermediaries and settlement arrangements. These layers can increase transaction costs, complicate reconciliation and slow the movement of funds, particularly when different markets operate under separate technical and regulatory requirements.

BLOOM aims to address some of these challenges by exploring how stablecoins and tokenized deposits can be used within coordinated settlement arrangements.

Stablecoins are digital assets designed to maintain a stable value, typically by referencing a currency such as the US dollar. Tokenized deposits, by contrast, represent deposits held with financial institutions in digital-token form. Although both can support digital transactions, they differ in their underlying structures, issuers and regulatory treatment.

By examining how these forms of digital money can be used across borders, the initiative seeks to create more efficient ways for financial institutions to settle transactions. A coordinated framework could reduce the need to negotiate and maintain separate technical and operational connections for every market or counterparty.

MAS has identified cost reduction and faster service development as central objectives. Nevertheless, lower fees and faster settlement are goals rather than guaranteed outcomes, and results will depend on implementation, interoperability, liquidity and compliance requirements.

The initiative also reflects a broader shift in financial infrastructure. Banks, payment providers and policymakers are increasingly examining whether tokenized forms of money can improve settlement processes without abandoning the safeguards required in regulated financial markets.

For Southeast Asia, the key question is whether these arrangements can operate reliably across different currencies, payment systems and regulatory frameworks while preserving appropriate oversight.

BLOOM builds on project orchid and expands its industry partnerships

The initiative builds on work that began several years before its formal launch. MAS introduced Project Orchid in 2021 to investigate potential applications for a digital Singapore dollar and the infrastructure needed to support digital money transactions.

In October 2025, the central bank launched BLOOM, drawing on lessons from earlier industry experiments to advance settlement capabilities for commercial use. Its scope extends beyond conventional payments to include corporate treasury management, trade finance and transactions carried out by artificial intelligence agents within predefined limits.

The latest expansion also broadens the initiative’s industry participation. Alongside established financial technology and payment companies, the programme includes Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group, according to MAS. Other participants include Circle, Coinbase, DBS, J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered and Stripe.

The World Bank Group’s participation brings an international development perspective to discussions about modernizing payment infrastructure and improving financial inclusion.

MAS Deputy Managing Director Leong Sing Chiong said collaboration between policymakers and industry participants would be necessary to address practical challenges involving the acceptance, settlement and interoperability of digital money.

His comments highlight a central issue for the project: technical innovation alone will not make cross-border payments seamless if institutions cannot reliably exchange and settle different forms of digital money across networks and jurisdictions.

Malaysia’s ringgit experiments add regional momentum

Malaysia’s participation comes as Bank Negara Malaysia pursues its own experiments with digital money. In February 2026, the central bank announced three initiatives to test ringgit-denominated stablecoins and tokenized deposits for wholesale payments, covering domestic and cross-border transactions.

The experiments are being conducted through Malaysia’s Digital Asset Innovation Hub, which allows industry participants to test digital asset applications in a controlled environment. The work also includes potential settlement use cases involving tokenized assets.

Bank Negara Malaysia has said the findings will help inform its policy direction on digital money, with greater clarity on ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits expected by the end of 2026.

Joining BLOOM creates an additional channel for Malaysia to engage with regional counterparts on cross-border settlement and common approaches to digital money. Thailand’s participation similarly provides an opportunity to examine how domestic regulatory expectations can coexist with shared regional infrastructure.

The initiative’s success will ultimately depend on whether participating institutions can establish practical arrangements that work across different currencies, payment networks and legal frameworks. Identity verification, sanctions screening, transaction controls and interoperability will remain important considerations.

For now, the expanded partnership marks a step toward closer regional cooperation rather than proof that stablecoins have replaced conventional cross-border payment systems. Its significance lies in bringing central banks and industry players together to develop approaches that could make regulated digital money more useful for institutional transactions.