Malaysia and Thailand join Singapore's BLOOM digital money initiative

Malaysia and Thailand join Singapore's BLOOM digital money project

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined Singapore's BLOOM initiative. The two central banks became policymaker members on Friday, according to a report by Cointelegraph.

BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, is a public-private project. Its goal is to help banks and other financial institutions use stablecoins and tokenized deposits to send money across borders. A stablecoin is a digital token whose value is tied to a currency. A tokenized deposit is a bank deposit held as a digital token.

Key facts at a glance

• Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined BLOOM on Friday as policymaker members.
• BLOOM is a public-private initiative focused on cross-border payments.
• Its participants include Airwallex, Mastercard, Ripple, Visa and the World Bank Group.
• Singapore's central bank launched BLOOM in October 2025.

What the Monetary Authority of Singapore says

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country's central bank, launched BLOOM in October 2025. The project builds on Project Orchid, a program that began in 2021 to explore uses for a digital Singapore dollar.

According to MAS, BLOOM aims to cut costs and help institutions bring services to market faster. It plans to do this by reducing the need for each institution to set up separate arrangements with every counterparty or market it works with.

BLOOM's work also covers corporate cash management, trade finance, and payments carried out by AI agents within predefined limits.

Malaysia plans ringgit stablecoin tests in 2026

Bank Negara Malaysia separately announced in February that three initiatives would test ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits in 2026. The ringgit is Malaysia's currency. These tests cover both domestic payments and cross-border wholesale payments, which are large payments between financial institutions.

Why cross-border payment costs matter

Moving money between countries can be costly for financial institutions. MAS says BLOOM is designed to lower those costs by reducing the number of one-to-one arrangements each institution needs to build. It also expects the project to help institutions launch new services faster.

Sources

• Cointelegraph
• Monetary Authority of Singapore
• Bank Negara Malaysia

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