MAS Brings Malaysia and Thailand Central Banks Into Bloom Digital Money Push

The Monetary Authority of Singapore is widening its cross-border digital money project, Bloom, with Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joining as policymaker members. According to The Business Times, the three central banks will work with industry players in their own markets to develop common approaches for using digital money across borders.

MAS announced the expanded membership on Friday, 23 October. Bloom, whose full name is the Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency initiative, was launched by the Singapore central bank in October last year as a public-private effort bringing together policymakers, financial institutions, payment networks and technology providers to advance the use of digital money in cross-border financial activity.

Contents

01

What the Three Central Banks Will Work On

02

Three Focus Areas for Participants

03

Who Is Taking Part

04

Why MAS Says Central Banks Are at the Table

What the Three Central Banks Will Work On

The joint work will cover how different forms of digital money can be accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and jurisdictions. It will also include determining relevant international standards, with jurisdiction-specific supervisory expectations potentially applied to cross-border digital money transactions while accounting for different local requirements.

For readers new to the terminology, digital money in this context refers to forms such as tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins. A stablecoin is a digital token designed to hold a steady value, typically by being backed by reserves, while a tokenised deposit is a bank deposit represented on a distributed ledger rather than only inside a traditional core banking system. MAS said greater coordination matters as financial institutions and jurisdictions develop different digital money use cases, including for these two forms, and that coordination will be important to support their effective use across borders.

The supervisory dimension is part of the design rather than an afterthought. Because each market has its own rules, the collaboration allows for jurisdiction-specific supervisory expectations to be applied to cross-border digital money transactions while still accounting for different local requirements. In practice, that means the three central banks are working towards shared technical approaches without assuming that one set of domestic rules fits all three markets.

Three Focus Areas for Participants

Bloom participants will concentrate on three areas to support the use of digital money across jurisdictions. The first is acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions, meaning how a payment made in one market is recognised and completed in another. The second is interoperability across digital money arrangements, which refers to different systems being able to work with one another rather than requiring a bespoke link for every pair of participants. The third is programmable controls, which include safeguards such as identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls.

Those programmable controls matter for compliance teams at banks and payment firms. Identity verification and sanctions screening are the checks institutions already run when moving money across borders, and building them into digital money arrangements is presented as a way to keep safeguards in place as new settlement methods develop.

Who Is Taking Part

Bloom's industry membership began with local banks DBS, OCBC and UOB, foreign banks including Standard Chartered and JPMorgan Chase, crypto exchange Coinbase, XSGD issuer StraitsX and USD Coin issuer Circle. Singapore investment company Temasek was also an original member.

The list has since grown to include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. The World Bank Group's involvement is intended to bring the perspectives and needs of developing countries to the table, widening the range of markets whose circumstances feed into the work.

The mix is notable for a project focused on cross-border settlement: it spans domestic banks, global lenders, card networks, payments firms, crypto and stablecoin issuers, and a multilateral development institution. Maybank's presence adds a Malaysian banking participant alongside the new central bank members.

Why MAS Says Central Banks Are at the Table

MAS said Bloom will reduce the need for financial institutions to establish separate arrangements with each counterparty or market, lowering implementation cost and improving time to market. That argument is aimed at the practical burden of cross-border payments, where a bank or payments firm may need a different connection, set of checks and legal arrangement for each market it serves.

The central bank added that participation by central banks will ensure public policy and regulatory considerations are taken into account as these approaches are developed. In other words, the technical work is being shaped with supervisors in the room rather than left to industry alone.

The expansion places the three central banks behind a shared set of technical and supervisory approaches rather than separate bilateral arrangements. For businesses and individuals moving money between Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, the stated aim is a more coordinated framework for how digital money is accepted, exchanged and settled across those markets.

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