Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) have joined BLOOM, the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s programme for settling cross-border payments in digital money, as policymaker members, MAS said in a media release dated 23 October 2026. The same release adds nine industry participants, among them Visa, Mastercard, Ripple, Maybank and the World Bank Group, to a member list that already counted Circle, Coinbase, Stripe and J.P. Morgan.
The digital money in question is spelled out: tokenised bank deposits and regulated stablecoins. What the release does not contain is a pilot, a currency pair, a corridor between the three countries or a start date. For now, BLOOM with Malaysia and Thailand is an agreement to work out common rules together, not a payment service anyone can use.
MAS described the goal as “common approaches” for how different forms of digital money are accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and jurisdictions. No separate statement from BNM or the BOT could be found on their own websites on the morning of 23 October; their positions come from the joint text published by MAS.
BLOOM MAS: what Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand signed up to
BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. MAS launched it on 16 October 2025 to let financial institutions settle in tokenised bank liabilities and “well-regulated” stablecoins, with standard ways to manage the risks. The 2025 launch covered G10 and Asian currencies, domestic as well as cross-border payments, and wholesale uses such as corporate treasury, trade finance and payments started by AI agents.
A year later, the programme gains its first foreign central banks. The 23 October release gives participants three areas of work:
- How banks and payment firms accept different forms of digital money in cross-border deals, how counterparties contract with each other, and how the transactions finally settle across markets.
- Interoperability, meaning the technical and operating choices that let one digital money arrangement work with another across networks and borders.
- Programmable controls built into transactions, with identity checks, sanctions screening and limits on what a payment can do as the examples given.
The pitch to the industry is cost. If BLOOM produces shared frameworks and commercial terms, a bank would no longer need a separate arrangement with every counterparty or every market, which MAS says would cut implementation costs and shorten the time to launch. The release also says international standards and each country’s supervisory expectations will be applied to these transactions “while allowing for differences in local requirements”. Central bank membership is there so that public policy questions are handled while the approaches are designed, not after.
Visa, Mastercard and Ripple join Circle and Coinbase on the member list
According to the joint release, nine companies and institutions join 16 existing industry participants. The table groups them as the release does.
| Group | Members named in the 23 October 2026 release |
|---|---|
| Policymakers | Monetary Authority of Singapore, Bank Negara Malaysia, Bank of Thailand |
| New industry participants (9) | Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa, World Bank Group |
| Existing participants (16) | Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Circle, Coinbase, DBS, J.P. Morgan, Kasikornbank, OCBC, Partior, Schroders, Standard Chartered, StraitsX, Stripe, Temasek, UOB, Xweave |
For crypto readers, the existing list is the more telling one. Circle issues USDC (see our profile of Circle and how USDC is backed), Coinbase and Anchorage Digital run crypto custody and trading, and StraitsX issues Singapore dollar and US dollar stablecoins. In the 2025 launch, MAS had put Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe and UOB on the distribution and clearing of settlement assets, Ant International and StraitsX on programmable compliance controls, and Coinbase and DBS on agentic payments.
The newcomers lean toward card networks and payment companies. Visa and Mastercard bring merchant acceptance, Airwallex and Nium run cross-border payout networks, and ShopeePay is an e-wallet used across Southeast Asia. Ripple is the only newcomer whose main business is crypto-based cross-border settlement. The World Bank Group joins as a multilateral development bank; MAS says it will bring the needs of developing economies into the work.
Each of the two new central banks also has a home lender on the list. Maybank appears among the newcomers, although its Singapore arm had announced its membership in August: The Star reported on 6 August 2026 that Maybank Singapore aimed to help “shape common standards and infrastructure principles”, according to its country chief executive Alvin Lee. Thailand’s Kasikornbank was already a participant.
What the three central banks said
Leong Sing Chiong, Deputy Managing Director (Markets and Development) at MAS, expects several forms of digital money to circulate across institutions and markets, and said that “collaboration among policymakers and industry participants will be needed to address practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability”.
Malaysia’s Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz was the most upbeat. “A future where frictionless cross-border payments can be made using multiple digital monies is now closer to a tangible reality than a far-fetched fantasy,” he said, adding that BNM looks forward to exploring it with the other central banks and industry partners.
The Bank of Thailand was more guarded. Dr Daranee Saeju, Deputy Governor for Payment Systems Stability and Financial Services Supervision, said the BOT wants to “help inform forward-looking regulatory approaches for tokenised money, particularly in cross-border payments and wholesale settlement”. She also said the bank’s oversight must stay “prudent, proportionate, and responsive to evolving risks”. Read together, the three statements describe a rule-making exercise. None of them mentions a launch.
Malaysia arrives with live tokenisation pilots
Of the two newcomers, Malaysia has the longer public track record. According to The Asian Banker (23 April 2026), BNM set up a Digital Asset Innovation Hub in June 2025, published a discussion paper on asset tokenisation in October 2025, and moved domestic interbank settlement to 24/7 with RENTAS+ the same month. In February 2026 it onboarded live pilots: Maybank on tokenised deposits for cross-border corporate payments, CIMB on tokenised deposits and some stablecoin uses in capital markets and treasury, and Standard Chartered Malaysia on a ringgit stablecoin for round-the-clock wholesale settlement, with Capital A as counterparty, in a separate sandbox.
On 25 March 2026, Maybank ran a live test with the energy group Yinson that combined atomic settlement with a ringgit to Singapore dollar conversion outside normal banking hours. That is exactly the kind of Malaysia to Singapore flow BLOOM is meant to standardise. BNM is due to publish its policy position on ringgit stablecoins and tokenised deposits by the end of 2026, which means the rules for any ringgit token in a BLOOM corridor are not yet written.
BNM has been busy this week as well. On 21 October it launched a separate ledger for bonds and sukuk, covered in our report on SSDS+, Malaysia’s tokenised bond platform. That project concerns securities, not payments, and has no announced link to BLOOM.
Thailand has said less in public. Beyond the BOT statement and Kasikornbank’s membership, we found no BOT document describing a tokenised money pilot tied to BLOOM.
Singapore wants private digital money anchored by a wholesale CBDC
BLOOM grew out of Project Orchid, which MAS set up in 2021 to study a digital Singapore dollar. Orchid ran more than ten trials and produced two industry reports in 2023. According to the 2025 release, it led to commercial products such as OCBC’s conditional payments for construction projects (November 2024) and DBS’s programmable rewards (July 2025). Kenneth Gay, MAS Chief FinTech Officer, said at the launch: “BLOOM takes this further, enhancing the range of settlement asset options for participants.”
MAS Managing Director Chia Der Jiun gave the wider plan at an INSEAD summit on 9 October 2026, as reported by Fintech Singapore. MAS intends to settle tokenised MAS Bills with a wholesale central bank digital currency, and has consulted on legislation for its framework for single-currency stablecoins, covering reserves, capital, redemption and disclosure. “As usage of private digital money scales, CBDCs will ultimately be needed to anchor monetary stability,” he said.
Regional cooperation on payments is not new either. In November 2022 the central banks of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand agreed to link their payment systems through QR codes and fast payments. BLOOM moves the same group of neighbours, minus two, from instant retail transfers to tokenised money.
Tokenised deposits and stablecoins: the two kinds of money in scope
The release keeps both forms in play without choosing between them. A tokenised deposit is an ordinary bank deposit recorded on a ledger: it stays a claim on the bank, sits inside banking rules and can usually pay interest. A stablecoin is issued by a separate company that holds reserves to back each token, and in most regimes it cannot pay interest to holders. Our story on SoFi’s tokenized deposit shows how a US bank is running both side by side, and our beginner’s guide to stablecoins explains reserves and redemption.
The European Union already regulates euro and dollar stablecoins as e-money tokens under MiCA. Singapore is finishing its own stablecoin law and Malaysia’s policy is due by the end of the year, so BLOOM members will be writing interoperability rules while two of the three national rulebooks are still moving.
No pilot, no corridor, no date: what is still missing
The 23 October release leaves the practical questions open:
- No first transaction, pilot or corridor between Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand is announced, and no timetable or budget is given.
- No stablecoin is named, and the release does not say whether ringgit or baht tokens would be eligible.
- Public blockchains are not mentioned, and neither is any role for XRP, USDC or other tokens of the member companies.
- The release does not refer to other central bank projects such as Project Guardian, Project Nexus or mBridge, so any link between them and BLOOM is unconfirmed.
There is also no market angle to report. Nothing in the announcement touches token supply or listings, and we found no price reaction attributed to it.
The next markers are on the regulators’ side: BNM’s ringgit stablecoin and tokenised deposit policy, due by the end of 2026, and Singapore’s single-currency stablecoin legislation after its consultation. The first BLOOM transaction involving a Malaysian or Thai participant, whenever MAS announces it, will show whether the three central banks have agreed on more than principles.