Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative to advance cross-border settlement using digital money. The 23 October 2026 announcement brings policymaker coordination to a programme involving banks, payment firms, networks and other industry participants.[1]
BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. MAS says it builds on Project Orchid and supports settlement assets including tokenised commercial-bank money and stablecoins meeting regulatory expectations. Its goal is to create common implementation and operating arrangements so institutions do not have to negotiate every connection from scratch.[2]
The work is divided by settlement problem
| Area | Question being addressed |
|---|---|
| Acceptance across jurisdictions | Which forms of digital money counterparties accept, how they contract and when settlement is final. |
| Interoperability | How separate networks and digital-money arrangements exchange and settle transactions. |
| Programmable controls | How identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction conditions are embedded. |
| Agentic payments | How AI agents can act within predefined limits and safeguards. |
The announced additions to the industry group include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank. The participants span payments, banking, infrastructure and development finance rather than forming one newly licensed service provider.[1]
Potential use cases include corporate treasury, trade finance and payments. Any reduction in cost or time to market remains an objective of the framework: the announcement supplies neither a common live transaction tariff nor measured savings across the programme. National permissions and the characteristics of each settlement asset still matter.[2]
Sources & further reading
- MAS, BNM and BOT Partner with Industry to Advance Cross-Border Settlement in Digital Money through BLOOM Monetary Authority of Singapore · 23 Oct 2026 · Accessed 26 Oct 2026
- BLOOM programme: objectives, settlement assets and participating members Monetary Authority of Singapore · 23 Oct 2026 · Accessed 26 Oct 2026