MAS Brings Malaysia and Thailand Into BLOOM as Visa, Mastercard and Ripple Join Cross-Border Digital Money Push
MAS Brings Malaysia and Thailand Into BLOOM as Visa, Mastercard and Ripple Join Cross-Border Digital Money Push #
Singapore’s BLOOM digital money initiative has expanded into Southeast Asia, with the central banks of Malaysia and Thailand joining as policymaker members alongside nine new industry participants including Visa, Mastercard and Ripple.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore announced on 23 October 2026 that Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand had signed on to BLOOM, an acronym for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, which MAS launched in October 2025. The two regional central banks are the first policymaker members beyond Singapore.
Through BLOOM, the three regulators will work with industry partners across their respective jurisdictions to build common frameworks for how different forms of digital money, including tokenised bank deposits and regulated stablecoins, can be accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and borders. MAS said the initiative aims to deepen engagement between policymakers and the private sector on settlement infrastructure while developing frameworks that account for both international standards and jurisdiction-specific supervisory requirements.
For financial institutions, one stated benefit is reduced complexity. MAS said BLOOM is designed to lower implementation costs and shorten time to market by removing the need for firms to establish separate bilateral arrangements with each counterparty or market they want to reach.
The nine new industry participants named are Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. They join an existing roster that includes Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Circle, Coinbase, DBS, Partior, Schroders and Xweave.
Senior central bank officials commented on the expansion. BNM Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz described a future of frictionless cross-border payments using multiple forms of digital money as “closer to a tangible reality.” BOT Deputy Governor Dr. Daranee Saeju said her institution was committed to providing regulatory guidance for tokenised money within the framework.
BLOOM draws on Project Orchid, MAS’s multi-year programme that ran more than ten trials exploring use cases for a digital Singapore dollar and the infrastructure required to support it. With two additional regulators and an expanded private-sector coalition, the initiative now spans three jurisdictions.
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