Malaysia's and Thailand's central banks join Singapore's effort to settle digital money across borders

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined BLOOM, a project led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the city-state's central bank and financial regulator. The Singapore authority announced the move on 23 October. BLOOM brings regulators and companies together to agree how digital money can be accepted, exchanged and settled between countries. The release names two kinds of digital money in particular: regulated stablecoins, tokens that track a currency such as the dollar, and tokenized deposits, ordinary bank balances issued as digital tokens.

The aim is practical. Common frameworks, the release says, would 'reduce the need for financial institutions to establish separate arrangements with each counterparty or market', lowering costs and speeding things up. Having central banks at the table, it adds, will make sure public policy and regulation are taken into account as the approaches are developed.

Nine more participants joined at the same time: Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group. They join sixteen already inside, among them Circle and Coinbase, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, Stripe, Ant International and Singapore's three big banks, DBS, OCBC and UOB. Each new central bank has a home lender in the group: Thailand's Kasikornbank was already a member, and Malaysia's Maybank joins now. The World Bank, the Singapore authority says, brings 'the perspectives and needs of developing economies'.

Participants will work on three things. The first is how institutions in different countries accept digital money, contract with each other and finally settle. The second is how separate digital money systems can work with one another across networks and borders. The third is built-in controls such as identity checks and sanctions screening.

The release is a statement of intent. It sets no timetable, reports no payment made, and does not say whether Malaysia or Thailand will change any rule. Daranee Saeju, a deputy governor of the Bank of Thailand, said the bank would use BLOOM 'to help inform forward-looking regulatory approaches for tokenised money'. She added that its oversight would stay 'prudent, proportionate, and responsive to evolving risks'. Aznan bin Abdul Aziz, a deputy governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, was more expansive. He called frictionless payments in several digital monies 'closer to a tangible reality than a far-fetched fantasy'.

Coverage beyond the release was thin. Bernama, Malaysia's national news agency, carried it on a wire published by Malay Mail, and Fintech News Singapore wrote it up. Both largely restate the release. The list of participants attached to it could not be opened, so the names here are those in the release's own text.