MAS-led BLOOM initiative expands with Malaysia, Thailand central banks to advance digital money settlement

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BLOOM digital money expansion

Highlights

Bank Negara Malaysia and Bank of Thailand joined the MAS-led BLOOM initiative, expanding regional collaboration on cross-border digital money settlement frameworks.
BLOOM’s participant list now includes Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group, broadening industry engagement in payments and trade finance.
The initiative targets interoperability, cross-border settlement and programmable controls in digital money, aiming to cut implementation costs and speed up market entry for financial institutions.

Regional framework for cross-border digital money

As reported by Monetary Authority of Singapore, citing Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand, they have joined the BLOOM, or Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, initiative as policymaker members to work with industry participants on common approaches for cross-border digital money use.

The initiative brings together policymakers, financial institutions, payment networks and technology providers to examine how different forms of digital money, including tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins, can be accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and jurisdictions. MAS says stronger coordination is becoming more important as financial institutions and markets develop separate digital money use cases.

BLOOM is focused on settlement infrastructure and frameworks that support interoperability in cross-border digital money transactions. The work covers the application of relevant international standards and jurisdiction-specific supervisory expectations, while allowing for differences in local regulatory requirements.

Industry participation and market impact

BLOOM’s participant base has also expanded to include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. The group is advancing digital money applications across payments, treasury and trade finance, including settlement across payment networks.

Participants are concentrating on three areas: acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions, interoperability across digital money arrangements, and programmable controls such as identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls. MAS says the development of implementation frameworks and aligned commercial and operating arrangements is intended to reduce the need for financial institutions to negotiate separate structures with each counterparty or market, lowering implementation costs and improving time to market.

The World Bank Group’s role as a multilateral development bank adds experience in payment systems modernisation, cross-border payments and financial inclusion, while bringing in the perspective of developing economies. MAS Deputy Managing Director Leong Sing Chiong says the future of finance will involve multiple forms of digital money operating across different institutions and markets, and that collaboration among policymakers and industry participants is needed to address practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability.

In our earlier article, we covered Bank Negara Malaysia’s updated policy guidance as it monitors inflation risks tied to higher energy prices and ongoing Middle East tensions. We noted that the shift in wording was read by markets as giving BNM more flexibility, with traders increasingly pricing in a possible rate hike, while the ringgit stayed relatively steady and bond yields saw wider swings.

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