Malaysia and Thailand Join BLOOM Initiative to Coordinate Cross-Border Digital Money Settlement

Key Facts

The Monetary Authority of Singapore said on October 23, 2026, that Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand had joined the BLOOM initiative as policymaker members, expanding regional coordination on the use of digital money in cross-border payments. The three central banks will work with financial-sector entities in their respective jurisdictions to develop common approaches to accepting, exchanging and settling different forms of digital money. The initiative covers transactions among institutions, payment networks and jurisdictions, placing interoperability and settlement at its core. MAS said BLOOM is a public-private initiative bringing together policymakers, financial institutions, payment networks and technology providers. Malaysia and Thailand’s entry broadens the initiative’s cooperation framework, while the announcement does not introduce a ready-to-use payment network.

The initiative covers multiple uses of digital money, including tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins, MAS said. Participants are working on applications including payments, treasury management and trade finance, alongside settlement across payment networks. In an earlier speech, MAS said settlement arrangements based on tokenized bank deposits and regulated stablecoins address domestic and cross-border use cases. This scope means the work is not limited to transfers between consumers, but extends to institutional transactions, trade finance and liquidity management. The variety of digital money forms and networks makes acceptance and settlement of assets among different parties one of the challenges the initiative seeks to address.

The announcement outlined three areas of work: accepting and settling digital money across jurisdictions, improving interoperability among digital money arrangements, and developing programmable controls. These controls include identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls, aimed at embedding compliance requirements in payment flows. The interoperability work seeks to enable different arrangements to work together rather than remain separate networks. MAS said the lack of such links could fragment liquidity and require institutions to duplicate infrastructure and processes. The work plan therefore combines addressing the movement of money between systems with the regulatory rules governing transfers.

MAS said the initiative aims to reduce the need for financial institutions to establish separate arrangements with each counterparty or market, lowering implementation costs and improving time to market. This remains a stated objective of the initiative; the announcement gave no realized savings or measure of transaction speed. Participation is expanding to include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. The addition of these institutions, payment networks and service providers gives the initiative a broader base for work on use cases spanning payments, treasury and trade finance. The expected impact depends on participants’ ability to agree on common arrangements that reduce the need for repeated connections between each institution and each market.

A deputy governor of Bank Negara Malaysia said the prospect of seamless cross-border payments using multiple forms of digital money was moving closer to reality, and that the bank would explore it through BLOOM. The bank’s position indicates that its participation is aimed at examining the feasibility of such payments through cooperation between regulators and the financial sector. The Bank of Thailand’s deputy governor said cooperation could help shape forward-looking regulatory approaches to tokenized money, particularly for cross-border payments and wholesale settlement. He added that the work would allow the bank to assess innovations and emerging risks. The regulatory statements place these issues alongside the technical questions, while developing common approaches among countries and institutions remains central to the initiative.

BLOOM comes as Southeast Asia’s regional instant-payment infrastructure expands. Bank Negara Malaysia said in its annual report that the region has 29 live instant-payment linkages, while linkage plans included the proposed Nexus project, designed as a single-connection bridge between India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The bank also said Nexus Global Payments was established in 2025 to own the scheme, govern the Nexus platform and prepare it for live launch. This work provides separate context for BLOOM, which focuses on coordinating the use and settlement of digital money, while the linkage figures and Nexus concern instant payments and regional connectivity. The October 23 announcement did not set a timeline for BLOOM’s outputs or a launch date for shared operational arrangements.