Stablecoin petals spread as Malaysia and Thailand join Singapore’s BLOOM

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s BLOOM initiative on Friday as policymaker members, expanding the cross-border stablecoin and tokenized-deposit project.

BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, is a public-private initiative intended to help financial institutions use stablecoins and tokenized deposits for cross-border payments. According to MAS, BLOOM aims to cut costs and help institutions bring services to market faster by reducing the need for institutions to set up arrangements with each counterparty or market.

MAS launched BLOOM in October 2025, building on Project Orchid, which began in 2021 to explore uses for a digital Singapore dollar. BLOOM’s work also covers corporate cash management, trade finance and payments executed by AI agents within predefined limits. Participants include Airwallex, Mastercard, Ripple, Visa and the World Bank Group.

Bank Negara Malaysia separately announced in February that three initiatives would test ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits for domestic and cross-border wholesale payments in 2026. Ripple also joined a Singapore sandbox to test RLUSD in trade finance.