SKN | Malaysia and Thailand Join Singapore’s Cross-Border Stablecoin Initiative

Key Points

•  Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined Singapore’s BLOOM initiative as policymaker members.
•  The public-private initiative aims to help financial institutions use stablecoins and tokenized deposits for international payments while reducing costs and time to market.
• BLOOM also explores corporate cash management, trade finance and payments executed by AI agents within predefined limits.

Malaysia and Thailand Join Singapore’s BLOOM Initiative

Malaysia and Thailand have joined Singapore’s effort to develop more efficient cross-border payment infrastructure using digital money, expanding regional central bank participation in the BLOOM initiative.

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined BLOOM as policymaker members on Friday, alongside Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which launched the initiative in October 2025.

BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. It is a public-private initiative designed to help financial institutions coordinate the use of stablecoins and tokenized deposits for cross-border payments.

The expansion brings three Southeast Asian monetary authorities into the initiative, creating a broader regional foundation for exploring how digital forms of money can support international settlement.

Reducing Cross-Border Payment Costs

BLOOM aims to reduce the cost and complexity of cross-border transactions by allowing financial institutions to coordinate their use of digital money across markets.

According to MAS, the initiative is intended to help institutions introduce services more quickly by reducing the need to establish separate arrangements with each counterparty or market.

Traditional cross-border payment processes can involve multiple financial institutions and separate operational arrangements. Coordinating settlement infrastructure could simplify those connections and make it easier for participating institutions to develop services across jurisdictions.

Stablecoins and tokenized deposits are central to this approach, although they represent different forms of digital money. Stablecoins are digital tokens designed to maintain a stable value, commonly against a reference currency, while tokenized deposits represent bank deposits recorded through digital token infrastructure.

BLOOM seeks to explore how these instruments can support cross-border settlement within a coordinated framework. The announcement did not specify transaction volumes, quantified cost-saving targets or a commercial launch timetable.

Building on Project Orchid

BLOOM builds on Project Orchid, an initiative launched in 2021 to explore potential applications for a digital Singapore dollar.

MAS introduced BLOOM in October 2025 to extend work on settlement capabilities and broaden the potential uses of digital money across financial services.

Its scope extends beyond international payments. The initiative also covers corporate cash management, trade finance and payments executed by artificial intelligence agents operating within predefined limits.

These applications reflect a wider effort to explore how programmable financial infrastructure could support business transactions and automated payment processes. For cross-border trade and corporate treasury operations, coordinated digital settlement could help simplify the movement of funds between participating institutions and markets.

BLOOM includes private-sector and institutional participants such as Airwallex, Mastercard, Ripple, Visa and the World Bank Group. Their involvement provides a channel for examining how digital settlement models might operate across payment networks and financial markets.

Malaysia Advances Its Own Digital Money Trials

Malaysia’s participation follows a separate domestic initiative announced by Bank Negara Malaysia in February. The central bank outlined three initiatives to test ringgit-denominated stablecoins and tokenized deposits for domestic and cross-border wholesale payments during 2026.

These trials complement BLOOM’s broader regional focus by examining potential applications for digital money within Malaysia’s financial system.

Participation in the regional initiative could help connect national experimentation with wider efforts to coordinate cross-border settlement. However, the announcement does not establish that the individual national trials are already interoperable or that a shared regional payment system has been deployed.

The practical significance will depend on how participating institutions address settlement arrangements, operational requirements and the differences between digital money instruments across jurisdictions.

Outlook

Malaysia and Thailand’s participation strengthens BLOOM’s regional scope as central banks and financial institutions explore alternatives to existing cross-border payment arrangements. The next indicators to watch are progress on practical settlement models, interoperability between participating markets and evidence of measurable reductions in transaction costs. Until these capabilities are demonstrated in live transactions, BLOOM remains an initiative with potential rather than a proven replacement for established international payment infrastructure.