Malaysia and Thailand join Singapore’s BLOOM initiative for stablecoins

Singapore’s plan to make stablecoins useful for cross-border payments just picked up two important neighbors. Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined the BLOOM initiative on Friday as policymaker members. What BLOOM actually does BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. Behind the branding sits a public-private initiative led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Its goal is to help financial institutions use stablecoins and tokenized deposits when moving money across borders. Specifically, the initiative wants to set standard approaches for cross-border settlement and exchange of two kinds of digital money. The first is tokenized bank liabilities, essentially bank deposits represented on a blockchain. The second is regulated stablecoins, tokens pegged to a fiat currency and issued under official oversight. The pitch is lower costs. By aligning regulatory frameworks across participating jurisdictions, BLOOM aims to cut the coordination expenses that make cross-border payments slow and pricey. MAS launched BLOOM on October 16, 2025. The Malaysian and Thai central banks came aboard on October 23, 2026, roughly a year after the project be...