Malaysia and Thailand join Singapore’s digital-money settlement initiative
Malaysia’s and Thailand’s central banks have joined a Singapore-led initiative examining how digital money could be used across borders. The announcement, made on 23 October 2026, brings Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand into BLOOM as policymaker members alongside Singapore’s monetary authority.
BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. It is a public-private initiative that brings policymakers together with financial institutions, payment networks and technology providers. Its stated task is to develop common approaches for cross-border use of digital money, including the acceptance, exchange and settlement of different forms across institutions, networks and jurisdictions.
The addition of the two central banks does not create a new shared currency or introduce a retail payment product. It extends the policy discussion around how separate systems and arrangements might work together when a transaction crosses a border. The initiative is framed as work on settlement infrastructure, commercial arrangements and regulatory considerations, rather than as a change that customers can use immediately.
Three areas of work
Participants have set out three main areas for the programme. The first concerns acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions. This includes how financial institutions might accept different forms of digital money for cross-border transactions, how counterparties could contract with one another, and how transactions could ultimately be settled across institutions and markets.
The second area is interoperability. The work will consider the technical and operational approaches needed for different digital-money arrangements to operate across networks, infrastructures and borders. That is a practical question for organisations that use different systems, but the announcement does not set out a single technical standard or require a particular system to be adopted.
The third area is programmable controls. These are safeguards built into the handling of a transaction, such as identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls. The emphasis on those measures places compliance alongside the stated aim of making cross-border arrangements work more smoothly.
Focus on frameworks, not approvals
The initiative covers possible applications in payments, treasury and trade finance. It also mentions tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins as forms of digital money that may need to operate alongside other arrangements. Mentioning them is not an announcement that a new stablecoin has been approved, issued or made available to the public in any of the three countries.
Singapore’s monetary authority says the programme will look at how international standards and jurisdiction-specific supervisory expectations can be applied while allowing for local requirements to differ. The participation of central banks is intended to ensure that public-policy and regulatory considerations are taken into account as the approaches are developed.
For financial institutions, BLOOM’s longer-term objective is to reduce the need to build separate arrangements with every counterparty or market. The initiative says that could lower implementation costs and improve the time needed to bring services to market. Those are intended benefits of the framework work, not outcomes that have already been delivered.
Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have described their roles as an opportunity to explore future cross-border payment and wholesale-settlement approaches. The Thai central bank has also said the work can help inform forward-looking regulatory approaches while keeping oversight prudent and proportionate. No implementation timetable, change to domestic payment rules or commitment to a particular digital-money product was set out in the 23 October announcement.
