The central banks of Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are developing shared approaches to cross-border digital money settlement through an expanded initiative called BLOOM. The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced the expansion on October 23, adding Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand as policymaker members alongside Singapore.
BLOOM, named for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, and Multi-currency, is a public-private initiative involving regulators, banks, payment networks, and technology providers. The scope includes regulated stablecoins designed to track a reference asset, often a national currency, and tokenized deposits, which represent bank deposits recorded as digital tokens.
Participants and Applications
The initiative brings together major financial infrastructure providers including Mastercard, Visa, Ripple, Circle, and Coinbase, alongside regional players such as Maybank and Airwallex. Applications being advanced span payments, corporate treasury operations, and trade finance. The World Bank Group participates to bring perspectives from developing economies and experience in payment-system modernization and financial inclusion.
Reducing Costs Through Shared Frameworks
Common frameworks would reduce the need for separate agreements with every counterparty or market, lowering implementation costs and shortening time to market. BLOOM's work examines how institutions accept different forms of money, contract with one another, complete settlement, and connect their systems.
Programmable controls involve rules built into digital transactions to apply identity verification, sanctions screening, and other safeguards. Singapore's regulatory proposals address how tokens issued across jurisdictions could qualify for recognition under its stablecoin framework. The city-state proposed legislative changes on September 1, including pathways for jointly issued tokens and a limited number of foreign-issued stablecoins under comparable rules.
Pilot Programs and Emerging Applications
Visa and Nium are exploring seven-day settlement through a stablecoin pilot announced August 25, covering weekends and public holidays with support for regulated tokens denominated in major currencies. Mastercard introduced Stablecoin Security on October 19 as a separate effort addressing transaction safeguards through payment intelligence and blockchain analytics to assess fraud and sanctions risks.
Settlement financing represents another application being developed through BLOOM. Ripple and Arf announced an arrangement on October 22 bringing RLUSD financing for licensed payment companies needing working capital while cross-border transfers settle, with initial offerings providing liquidity on the XRP Ledger.
