Malaysia and Thailand Join Singapore’s BLOOM Initiative

Malaysia and Thailand’s central banks have joined Singapore’s BLOOM initiative to develop common approaches for cross-border transactions involving regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said October 23. Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand entered the initiative as policymaker members. They will work with Singapore’s central bank and industry participants on how digital money can be accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and national jurisdictions. The work will also address interoperability between digital-money systems and programmable controls, including identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls. Participating jurisdictions will account for local regulatory requirements as they develop the frameworks, according to MAS. BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multicurrency, was launched by MAS in October 2025 as a public-private initiative. Its participants include policymakers, financial institutions, payment networks and technology providers. The expanded group includes Ripple, Mastercard, Maybank, Airwallex, Visa and the World Bank Group, among other...