Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined Singapore’s BLOOM initiative as policymaker members, the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced on October 23.
BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, brings together policymakers and industry participants to develop arrangements for using digital money across borders, including tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins.
The work covers three areas: acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions, interoperability between digital money arrangements, and programmable controls such as identity verification and sanctions screening.
Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group have also joined.
“The future of finance will involve multiple forms of digital money operating across different institutions and markets,” said Leong Sing Chiong, MAS Deputy Managing Director for Markets and Development.
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BLOOM addresses the arrangements needed around cross-border digital money: acceptance, contracts, settlement and controls. Its stated objective is to reduce separate arrangements between institutions and markets. The three central banks’ participation puts supervisory requirements directly into that work.