Monetary Authority of Singapore expands BLOOM with Malaysian and Thai central banks to advance cross-border digital money settlement

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that Malaysia’s central bank and the Bank of Thailand have joined the Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency (BLOOM) initiative as policymaker members. Together with industry participants, they will develop common approaches for accepting, exchanging and settling digital money across institutions, networks and jurisdictions. The expansion builds on MAS’ previously outlined work through BLOOM to develop settlement arrangements for tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins, with interoperability and safeguards supporting wider adoption. Participation has also expanded to include the World Bank Group and additional payment, technology and financial services firms, with applications spanning payments, treasury and trade finance. The work will focus on three areas: acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions, interoperability between digital money arrangements, and programmable controls. These encompass contractual and settlement arrangements between counterparties, technical and operational connections between systems, and safeguards such as identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls. Participants will examine how international standards and local supervisory expectations can apply while accommodating differences in domestic requirements. Common implementation frameworks and aligned commercial and operating arrangements are intended to reduce the need for institutions to negotiate separate arrangements with each counterparty or market, lowering implementation costs and shortening time to market.