Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand Expand BLOOM Cross-Border Stablecoin Initiative
Three central banks now sit around the same table to work out how regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits can move money across borders in real time. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) confirmed on 23 October 2026 that Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined the BLOOM initiative as policymaker members, upgrading what began as a Singapore-led sandbox into a formal multilateral framework. For accounting firms, CFOs, and finance teams with regional operations, the implications for stablecoin accounting, interoperability, and transaction controls are worth understanding now, well ahead of any binding rulebook.
What BLOOM Is and Why It Matters
BLOOM stands for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. MAS launched it roughly a year before this announcement, gathering banks and technology companies to test payments using tokenized bank money and regulated stablecoins. The goal was never narrow: MAS wanted to understand how different forms of digital money could coexist on different networks without requiring each pair of counterparties to build bespoke connectivity.
The Institutional Weight Behind the Initiative
The participant list is significant. Alongside the three central banks, BLOOM now includes Ripple, Visa, Mastercard, the World Bank Group, Circle, JPMorgan, Standard Chartered, and Stripe. That combination of global card networks, blockchain infrastructure providers, a multilateral development institution, and major transaction banks signals that this is not an academic pilot. These are organisations that collectively touch an enormous share of global payment flows.
Ripple had already announced in March 2026 that it would test trade payments using its RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger. Its trial with supply chain fintech Unloq uses the SC+ platform to release payments automatically when predefined conditions are met, a structure that raises its own questions around when a payment obligation is extinguished and how that maps to revenue recognition timing in a cross-border supply chain context.
What the Three Central Banks Said
MAS Deputy Managing Director Leong Sing Chiong framed the development as an architectural question: the future of finance will involve multiple forms of digital money operating across different institutions and markets, and the infrastructure needs to reflect that. Bank Negara Malaysia's Deputy Governor Aznan bin Abdul Aziz noted that cross-border payments using multiple forms of digital money are becoming a more tangible prospect rather than a distant ambition. Bank of Thailand's Deputy Governor Daranee Saeju said BLOOM would help Thailand examine its regulatory approach to tokenized money, particularly in cross-border and wholesale settlement contexts.
The three statements together suggest that all three jurisdictions are moving from observation to active policy formation. That shift changes the timeline planning assumptions for firms operating in those markets.
Scope of the Technical Work
MAS has been specific about the three areas BLOOM will focus on. The first is how banks handle different forms of digital money for cross-border transactions, including the interaction between regulated stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and conventional payment rails. The second is interoperability: how different networks connect so that a payment initiated on one ledger or platform can settle on another without manual intervention. The third is safeguards, covering identity verification, sanctions screening, and transaction-level controls.
Interoperability as an Accounting Problem
Interoperability is not only a technology question. When a payment moves from a tokenized deposit on one network to a regulated stablecoin on another before arriving as fiat currency, each conversion or transfer may be a separate accounting event. The functional currency of the paying and receiving entity, the timing of recognition, and whether a derecognition event has occurred at each step all need to be established before the first live transaction settles. Firms using digital asset accounting software will need to confirm that their systems can capture multi-leg digital money flows at the instrument level, not just at the final settlement amount.
Safeguards and What They Mean for Compliance Teams
The explicit mention of sanctions screening and transaction controls in the MAS statement is notable. In a multi-network, multi-currency environment, the obligation to screen does not disappear between legs of a payment: it attaches to each participant in the chain. Accounting and compliance teams need to understand which entity in a BLOOM-connected transaction is responsible for each screening step, and how that is evidenced in the audit trail. This connects directly to the records that crypto accounting software must produce for regulatory review.
Malaysia's parallel infrastructure development is relevant context here. The country recently launched its tokenized bond and sukuk depository, and understanding how that infrastructure relates to BLOOM's cross-border layer is a question Malaysian treasury and finance teams should be asking now. For more background on that development, see our coverage of Malaysia's tokenized bond and sukuk depository.
Stablecoin Accounting Implications for Regional Firms
BLOOM operates at the wholesale and institutional level, which means the firms most immediately affected are banks, large corporates, and treasury operations with cross-border payment flows between Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. But the accounting treatment questions that BLOOM raises will eventually trickle into the books of any business that receives or pays using a regulated stablecoin connected to this infrastructure.
Classification and Measurement Under IFRS
Under IFRS 9, a stablecoin held by a corporate entity is typically classified based on the contractual cash flow characteristics test and the business model test. A regulated stablecoin redeemable at par in fiat on demand may meet the solely payments of principal and interest (SPPI) criterion if its terms are sufficiently debt-like, though this analysis is instrument-specific and must be done at the individual stablecoin level. A tokenized bank deposit, by contrast, is a liability of the issuing bank and may sit more clearly within existing deposit accounting frameworks, though tokenization adds layers that standard deposit accounting did not anticipate.
When a BLOOM-connected transaction involves converting a tokenized deposit into a regulated stablecoin mid-flight, the holding period for each instrument, even if measured in seconds, may trigger recognition and derecognition entries. Finance teams should work with their auditors now to establish an agreed-upon accounting policy for these multi-instrument flows rather than resolving it transaction by transaction after the fact.
Functional Currency and Foreign Exchange
BLOOM's multi-currency design means a single cross-border payment may touch instruments denominated in Singapore dollars, Malaysian ringgit, and Thai baht before final settlement. Each step that involves a currency other than the entity's functional currency requires translation under IAS 21, and any exchange difference arising between recognition and settlement is a profit or loss item. At high transaction volumes, even small exchange movements on short-dated stablecoin holdings can produce material aggregate differences that require robust capture in the crypto bookkeeping software used by finance teams.
Transfer Pricing and Substance
For multinational groups with entities in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, BLOOM-connected intragroup payments may simplify settlement mechanics while simultaneously raising transfer pricing documentation requirements. If a group treasury entity in Singapore uses BLOOM infrastructure to settle payables on behalf of subsidiaries in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, the arm's length pricing of that treasury function and the substance of the Singapore entity both come into scope. This is an area where tax and accounting teams need to coordinate before the infrastructure is used operationally.
What Firms Should Do Now
BLOOM is still a development-stage initiative. No binding standards have been issued. But the addition of two sovereign central banks as policymaker members means the timeline to binding requirements has shortened, and the scope of eventual standards has widened. Firms that wait for final rules before mapping their exposures will be under time pressure when those rules arrive.
Practical Steps for Accounting and Finance Teams
The first step is an inventory: which entities in your group have operations in Singapore, Malaysia, or Thailand, and which of those entities currently use or plan to use stablecoins or tokenized instruments for cross-border payments? That inventory feeds directly into the accounting policy work described above.
The second step is a systems assessment. Stablecoin accounting at the instrument level requires that your general ledger or sub-ledger can record the ISIN or instrument identifier of each stablecoin held, the acquisition cost, any unrealised movement, and the settlement amount. Many ERP configurations that handle conventional foreign currency transactions are not currently set up to do this for tokenized instruments. Identifying gaps now gives implementation teams adequate lead time.
The third step is engagement with banking counterparties. If your cash management bank is a BLOOM participant, it is worth opening a dialogue about what transaction data will be available at settlement, what format that data will take, and how it will integrate with your accounting systems. The more granular the settlement data, the easier the accounting and audit trail.
For a related angle on how global card networks are building stablecoin payment infrastructure, the stablecoin accounting implications of Mastercard's agent payments rollout offers useful parallel reading for firms thinking about institutional stablecoin exposure.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is BLOOM and which central banks are now involved?
BLOOM (Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency) is an initiative led by Singapore's Monetary Authority of Singapore to test cross-border payments using regulated stablecoins and tokenized bank deposits. As of October 2026, Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have joined as policymaker members alongside the founding MAS participants.
Does BLOOM create new accounting standards for stablecoins?
Not yet. BLOOM is a policy and technology development initiative, not a standard-setter. However, the work it produces, particularly around interoperability standards and safeguards, is likely to inform future regulatory guidance in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Firms should treat BLOOM's stated focus areas as a signal of where binding requirements are heading.
How should a corporate treasury account for a stablecoin received through BLOOM-connected infrastructure?
The accounting treatment depends on the specific instrument. A regulated stablecoin redeemable at par on demand needs to be analysed under IFRS 9 for classification. A tokenized bank deposit may follow deposit accounting frameworks, though the tokenization layer requires additional policy decisions. Firms should document their accounting policy at the instrument level and agree it with auditors before the first transaction settles.
Which industries are most immediately affected by BLOOM's expansion?
Banks and financial institutions with correspondent banking relationships across Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are the primary audience for BLOOM's current work. Beyond those, large corporates and multinationals with intragroup treasury flows or supply chain payment obligations across those three markets are the next most affected group. Retailers and SMEs are less immediately in scope, though that may change as the infrastructure matures.
What sanctions screening obligations apply in a multi-network stablecoin payment?
MAS has explicitly identified sanctions screening as a BLOOM workstream topic. In a multi-network payment, each participant in the payment chain retains its own obligations under applicable sanctions regimes. Firms should not assume that screening performed at one leg of the transaction discharges obligations at another leg. This is a compliance architecture question that needs to be resolved with legal counsel and reflected in the transaction monitoring configuration of any crypto accounting or compliance system used.
Source: The Block