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

MAS adds Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand to its tokenized-money settlement initiative; Ripple, Visa, Mastercard, JPMorgan and Stripe are in the private cohort.

by 4 min read
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The Monetary Authority of Singapore on October 23, 2026 added Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand as policymaker members of BLOOM — Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency — the cross-border settlement sandbox MAS launched in October 2025 for regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits. The expansion was reported by The Block, with Visa's and Ripple's prior entries previously detailed in Central Banking and TheAsianBanker.

What BLOOM is

BLOOM is MAS's public–private sandbox for cross-border settlement using regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits. Its stated goals, per the MAS communication cited today:

  • Settle cross-border transactions in multiple currencies — G10 and Asian — using regulated stablecoins and tokenized deposits.
  • Study how banks route value across different forms of digital money, domestically and across borders.
  • Test interoperability between networks and ledgers.
  • Build the compliance scaffolding — identity, sanctions screening, transaction controls — needed to industrialize that.

MAS Deputy Managing Director Leong Sing Chiong, on today's expansion: "The future of finance will involve multiple forms of digital money operating across different institutions and markets." Bank Negara Malaysia Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz and Bank of Thailand Deputy Governor Daranee Saeju are credited in paraphrased comments on their respective regulatory interests — BNM on cross-border payments plumbing, BoT on tokenized-money regulatory approaches, particularly for wholesale settlement.

Who is in the cohort now

Central banks       : MAS (lead), BNM (new), BoT (new)
Payment networks    : Visa, Mastercard
Crypto issuers      : Ripple (RLUSD on XRP Ledger), Circle
Banks               : JPMorgan, Standard Chartered
Exchanges           : Coinbase
Payments            : Stripe
Trade fintech       : Unloq (SC+ platform, trade payments w/ Ripple)
Multilateral        : World Bank Group

Not every participant is in every workstream. Ripple joined in March 2026 to pilot trade settlement using RLUSD on the XRP Ledger with Unloq's SC+ platform; the pilot is sandboxed, not a general RLUSD approval. Visa and Nium are piloting USD- and EUR-denominated stablecoin settlement on a 24/7 basis; neither firm has disclosed timelines.

Why this expansion matters

Three central banks on one sandbox for tokenized money is a jurisdictional pattern worth tracking. Each is bringing a different piece:

  • MAS: a decade of digital-money pilots behind it — Project Ubin (2016–2020), Project Guardian (2022, tokenized asset settlement), Project Dunbar (with BRI, BNM and others), mBridge (with China and the UAE, >$22M in pilot transactions on an earlier phase). BLOOM is the production-adjacent next step.
  • BNM: has run its own tokenized-deposit experiments; joining BLOOM slots Malaysian clearing into a shared sandbox with Singapore and Thailand.
  • BoT: historical lead on Project Inthanon (2018–) and the Inthanon-LionRock HKD cross-border pilot with Hong Kong (2019). Joining BLOOM lines the Thai central bank up for stablecoin-rail work that it has avoided bilaterally.

The pattern is Asia-Pacific regulators building the compliance layer around regulated stablecoins before the EU's MiCA review and the US GENIUS Act implementing rules land. For protocol teams on the private side, membership is the key to shipping cross-border stablecoin products inside Southeast Asia's three largest economies without each central bank running its own standalone pilot.

What to watch

  1. mBridge next phase. The BIS-backed mBridge CBDC project has been the comparator for everything MAS does on cross-border rails. The question BLOOM poses: is the Southeast Asian answer going to be tokenized commercial-bank money and regulated stablecoins, rather than wholesale CBDC? The three-regulator cohort suggests yes.
  2. A regulated stablecoin shortlist. BLOOM is a venue, not a licence. Which stablecoins Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand jointly recognize as "regulated" for settlement is the real policy artifact to come out of it. Ripple's RLUSD is in; USDC via Circle is in; the local-currency names are the open question.
  3. A trade-finance product shipped in-market. Unloq + Ripple on trade payments is the furthest-along commercial pilot. First invoice settled through a BLOOM participant with real counterparties is the milestone.
  4. Interoperability with other hubs. BLOOM does not yet connect to the UAE's cross-border work (where mBridge sits) or the EU's wholesale DLT trials. Any formal bridge is a 2027 story at earliest.

Context

MAS has been running tokenized-money pilots longer than any G20 regulator. The sequence — Ubin → Guardian → BLOOM — is incremental: compute first, then asset classes, then multi-currency settlement. Adding Malaysia and Thailand is the first time a MAS tokenized-money initiative crosses borders with full policymaker status, not just observer or technical participant.

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