Malaysia and Thailand join Singapore's BLOOM cross-border stablecoin initiative

The Central Bank of Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined the Singapore-led BLOOM initiative on Friday as members of the policymakers. BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, and is a public-private partnership initiative aimed at helping financial institutions utilize stablecoins and tokenized deposits for cross-border payments. According to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the initiative aims to reduce costs and help institutions bring services to market faster by decreasing the need for financial institutions to establish arrangements with each counterparty or market individually.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore launched BLOOM in October 2025, building on Project Orchid, which was initiated in 2021 to explore the application of a digital Singapore dollar. BLOOM's work also covers corporate cash management, trade financing, and payments executed by AI agents within preset limits, with participants including Airwallex, Mastercard, Ripple, Visa, and the World Bank Group. Additionally, the Central Bank of Malaysia announced in February that three initiatives would test the ringgit stablecoin and tokenized deposits for domestic and cross-border wholesale payments in 2026.