Malaysia and Thailand’s Central Banks Join Singapore’s BLOOM. What Is Confirmed, and What Isn’t Live Yet.

Signal Spotlight · Cross-border digital money in Southeast Asia

What happened

According to The Block, Unchained and Fintech News Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the expansion on 23 October 2026. Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined as policymaker members. MAS launched BLOOM in October 2025 to bring banks, payment firms and technology providers together to test cross-border payments using tokenized bank money and regulated stablecoins. Fintech News Singapore says the name stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency.

The new industry members. Fintech News Singapore lists Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay and Visa, plus the World Bank Group. Unchained reports that MAS's annex counts 24 industry members in total, with the World Bank Group in a separate category as a development lender. Earlier members named in the coverage include Circle, Coinbase, Anchorage Digital, DBS, J.P. Morgan, Kasikornbank, StraitsX, Standard Chartered and Stripe. Ripple, Visa, Nium and Maybank had disclosed their roles earlier in 2026.

What the work covers. Per Fintech News Singapore and The Block, MAS says BLOOM will look at how banks accept and settle different forms of digital money across borders, how separate networks connect, and controls such as identity checks, sanctions screening and transaction controls. MAS says the aim is to "reduce the need for financial institutions to establish separate arrangements with each counterparty or market."

What the central banks said. MAS deputy managing director Leong Sing Chiong said collaboration "will be needed to address practical issues around acceptance, settlement and interoperability." BNM deputy governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz described frictionless cross-border payments as "closer to a tangible reality than a far-fetched fantasy." Bank of Thailand deputy governor Daranee Saeju said the bank would use BLOOM "to help inform forward-looking regulatory approaches for tokenised money."

What is and is not established

Nothing is described as live. Unchained reports that MAS names no stablecoin, tokenized deposit product, payment corridor, pilot or start date under the program. The Block describes BLOOM as a testing effort.

The members are central banks, not a payment network. Malaysia and Thailand joined as policymakers. That is different from the two countries' banks building a live settlement link. Maybank, as an industry member, and Kasikornbank, as an earlier one, are separate from the central banks' role.

Only a few pilots are public. Unchained says the only token publicly named in a BLOOM pilot is Ripple's RLUSD, which Ripple said in March it would test with trade finance firm Unloq. Visa said in August it would pilot weekend and holiday settlement with Nium, using unnamed dollar and euro stablecoins. We found no pilot results.

No timeline is given. The coverage has no go-live date and no end date for testing.

Philippine participation is not mentioned. None of the policymaker or industry members named in the coverage we read is a Philippine central bank or bank. We did not see MAS's full annex, so we cannot say that none exists.

We did not read the MAS release. The details come from The Block, Unchained and Fintech News Singapore, which agree on the core facts.

Why it matters

The signal is regulatory alignment more than a new payment route. Having three central banks in the same initiative suggests they want common ways to treat stablecoins and tokenized deposits before products scale. Bank of Thailand's statement says as much: it will use BLOOM to inform regulation of tokenized money.