Singapore's BLOOM initiative expands with Malaysian and Thai central banks

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has expanded its BLOOM initiative, a public-private forum designed to standardize cross-border digital money transactions. Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined the program as policymaker members, marking a significant shift toward multi-national regulatory coordination for digital assets.

BLOOM, which stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, and Multi-currency, focuses on the acceptance, exchange, and settlement of regulated stablecoins and tokenized deposits. The initiative aims to create interoperability between different digital money arrangements and implement programmable controls, such as identity verification and sanctions screening. By establishing common frameworks, the program seeks to reduce the need for financial institutions to create individual bilateral agreements for every market or counterparty, thereby lowering costs and increasing efficiency.

The expansion significantly broadens the initiative's industry roster, adding nine new members including Mastercard, Visa, Airwallex, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, and the World Bank Group. Existing participants include J.P. Morgan, Coinbase, Circle, and Standard Chartered. While the expansion increases the number of industry participants to 25, MAS has not yet named a specific stablecoin or pilot launch date.