The central banks of Malaysia and Thailand have joined BLOOM, the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s program for settling cross-border payments in regulated stablecoins and tokenized deposits. MAS announced on October 23 that Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand had signed on as policymaker members, which expands the programme from a MAS-only initiative to one with three central banks.
The same announcement added nine organizations to the BLOOM initiative: Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. MAS launched BLOOM in October 2025, and the name stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency.
Three Central Banks and Nine New Members Join BLOOM
The nine newcomers join a group that already included Anchorage Digital, Ant International, Circle, Coinbase, DBS, J.P. Morgan, Kasikornbank, OCBC, Partior, Schroders, Standard Chartered, StraitsX, Stripe, Temasek, UOB and Xweave. MAS said the three central banks will work with industry players in their own jurisdictions on common approaches to how digital money is accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and borders.
The practical goal is to cut duplicated work. MAS said implementation frameworks and aligned commercial arrangements will reduce the need for financial institutions to set up separate arrangements with each counterparty or market, which it expects to lower implementation costs and shorten time to market.
MAS Deputy Managing Director Leong Sing Chiong said in the release that policymakers and industry will need to work together on “practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability.” Bank Negara Malaysia Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz said frictionless cross-border payments using multiple digital monies are “now closer to a tangible reality than a far-fetched fantasy.” Bank of Thailand Deputy Governor Daranee Saeju said the central bank will use BLOOM “to help inform forward-looking regulatory approaches for tokenised money.”
MAS’s October 23 Release Names No Token, Corridor or Start Date
The announcement sets out a membership and a mandate, not a product. The MAS release does not name a stablecoin, a tokenized deposit product, a payment corridor or a launch date, and it does not describe any service under BLOOM as live. MAS said participants are advancing applications across payments, treasury and trade finance, but it attached no figures or timelines to that work.
The concrete activity under BLOOM so far comes from the companies themselves. In August, Visa announced a pilot with Nium to test settlement in US dollar and euro-denominated stablecoins seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays. Neither firm named the stablecoins involved or disclosed a completion date.
Ripple’s RLUSD Trade-Finance Pilot With Unloq Dates to March 25
Ripple is listed among the October newcomers, but it announced its participation in BLOOM on March 25. That pilot, run with supply chain finance firm Unloq, uses Unloq’s SC+ platform on the XRP Ledger with RLUSD as the settlement asset. Payments are released only when predefined commercial conditions, such as shipment verification, are met.
Fiona Murray, Ripple’s managing director for Asia Pacific, said at the time that BLOOM aligns with the company’s “commitment to compliant, real-world utility for blockchain technology.” The October listing does not mean Malaysia or Thailand has approved RLUSD for use in their domestic payment systems, and the MAS release makes no reference to it.
Malaysia Promised Ringgit Stablecoin Clarity by End-2026 as Thailand Drafts Baht Rules
Both new policymaker members are building their own frameworks alongside BLOOM. On February 11, Bank Negara Malaysia said its Digital Asset Innovation Hub had onboarded three initiatives to test ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits in wholesale domestic and cross-border payments, and that it intends to give greater clarity on their use by end-2026. The Edge Malaysia reported that Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and Capital A are running the ringgit stablecoin project, while Maybank and CIMB are each testing tokenized deposits for payments.
In Thailand, Bank of Thailand Governor Vitai Ratanakorn said in June that the study on a baht stablecoin’s design was in its final stage, according to The Nation. He said a public hearing would follow in the coming months and formal regulations would be announced in 2026 or early 2027, with the token designed for payments and settlement rather than speculation.
Author: Ayanfe Fakunle
The editorial team at #DisruptionBanking has taken all precautions to ensure that no persons or organizations have been adversely affected or offered any sort of financial advice in this article. This article is most definitely not financial advice.
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