Malaysia, Thailand central banks join MAS cross-border payment initiative

[SINGAPORE] The Malaysian and Thai central banks have joined the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) cross-border digital money initiative, Bloom, as policymaker members.

MAS, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) will partner industry players across their respective jurisdictions to develop common approaches for the cross-border use of digital money, said MAS on Friday (Oct 23).

This will include how different forms of digital money can be accepted, exchanged and settled across institutions, networks and jurisdictions.

“As financial institutions and jurisdictions develop different digital money use cases, including for tokenised deposits and regulated stablecoins, greater coordination will be important to support its effective use across borders,” said MAS.

Singapore’s central bank launched the Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency initiative, or Bloom, in October last year. The public-private initiative brings together policymakers, financial institutions, payment networks and technology providers to “advance the use of digital money in cross-border financial activity”.

The collaboration with BNM and BOT will include the determination of relevant international standards, and “jurisdiction-specific” supervisory expectations could be applied for cross-border digital money transactions while accounting for different local requirements.

Supporting the use of digital money

Bloom participants will focus on three areas to support the use of digital money across jurisdictions: the acceptance and settlement across jurisdictions; interoperability across digital money arrangements; and programmable controls including safeguards such as identity verification, sanctions screening and transaction controls.

Bloom’s industry members started with local banks DBS, OCBC and UOB, foreign banks including Standard Chartered and JPMorgan Chase, as well as crypto exchange Coinbase, XSGD issuer StraitsX and USD Coin issuer Circle. Singapore investment company Temasek was also an original member.

The member list has since expanded to include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Nium, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa and the World Bank Group – the latter will help bring the perspectives and needs of developing countries to the table.

“Bloom will reduce the need for financial institutions to establish separate arrangements with each counterparty or market, lowering implementation cost and improving time to market,” said MAS. “The participation of central banks will ensure that public policy and regulatory considerations are taken into account as these approaches are developed.”