Singapore's MAS Unites Three Central Banks Under BLOOM Stablecoin Settlement Plan

MAS Adds Two Central Banks to BLOOM

Singapore's central bank has drawn Malaysia and Thailand into one shared framework for moving digital money across borders. On October 23, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, as policymaker members. The program develops settlement arrangements for regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits, and the two new members put three Southeast Asian regulators in the same room to decide how digital money issued under separate national rules gets accepted, exchanged and settled between institutions. Per the official announcement, the work runs along three streams: cross-border acceptance and settlement, interoperability between digital money networks, and programmable transaction controls, the third covering identity verification, sanctions screening and the transfer restrictions institutions may need when moving funds internationally. BLOOM operates as a public-private collaboration in which policymakers, banks, payment networks and technology providers advance the designs while each jurisdiction keeps its own supervisory authority. MAS Deputy Managing Director Leong Sing Chiong said financial markets will increasingly run across multiple forms of digital money and welcomed both central banks into the practical work of cross-border settlement. Bank Negara Malaysia Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz described frictionless payments in different digital currencies as moving from vision to something realistically within reach. His Thai counterpart, Daranee Saeju, said BLOOM would inform Thailand's regulatory approach to tokenized money, with wholesale settlement and international payments in focus. The scope stops at implementation frameworks and commercial arrangements between participating institutions: no shared stablecoin license, no common currency and no operational three-country settlement network was announced, and the release carries no launch date or adoption timetable.

Ripple, Visa and a Broader Participant Table

MAS started BLOOM in October 2025, building on Project Orchid, the digital Singapore dollar exploration that ran from 2021. The participant table has since widened on both the official and industry sides. Alongside the two central banks, new additions include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, the World Bank Group and Visa. Existing members already counted Circle, Coinbase, J.P. Morgan, DBS, Anchorage Digital and Standard Chartered. For banks, the stated pain point is cost and speed: settling cross-border digital payments today means building a bridge and a compliance file with every counterparty in every market, and a unified interoperability framework is meant to cut duplicate agreements and shorten go-live time. The scope reaches past payments into corporate treasury, trade finance and payments executed by AI agents within preset limits, ground the PayFi sector has pushed for years. Ripple's seat builds on its RLUSD trade finance pilot with Unloq, which tested settlement on the XRP Ledger, though neither Malaysia nor Thailand has authorized RLUSD domestically and MAS named no corridor using the token. Visa and Nium already operate a settlement pilot inside BLOOM that tests cross-border payments in regulated US dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins outside conventional banking hours, weekends included. Malaysia's entry did not start from zero either: in February, Bank Negara Malaysia set out three controlled initiatives to test ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits for domestic and cross-border wholesale payments, with policy clarity expected by the end of 2026. Thailand has gone further, opening a public consultation on October 20 for baht-backed stablecoin issuers and wallet providers that covers reserve backing, redemption safeguards and transaction monitoring; per the Bank of Thailand's consultation, issuers and wallet providers would carry separate responsibilities alongside financial stability and cybersecurity requirements.

Frameworks Now, Settlement Rights Later

Our reading of the October 23 documents: this is a standards exercise, not a market opening. The MAS release defines membership and three workstreams but withholds a launch date, transaction volumes and any timetable for common rules, so no institution gains settlement rights in another jurisdiction today. For Ripple and Circle, membership buys a seat where interoperability definitions get written, not approval for RLUSD or USDC in any new market. Two things to watch next: whether a demonstration transaction is published once the frameworks harden, and how the AI-agent payment concept gets translated into supervisory requirements.