Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand's central banks join BLOOM to promote cross-border digital currency settlement interoperability According to TechFlow, on October 23rd, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and Bank of Thailand (BOT) have joined the BLOOM program as policy-making members. The three central banks will collaborate with industry participants in their respective jurisdictions to explore the acceptance, exchange, and settlement mechanisms of different forms of digital currencies in cross institutional, cross network, and cross jurisdictional scenarios. BLOOM focuses on cross-border applications of digital currencies such as tokenized deposits and regulated stablecoins, with a focus on promoting three areas of work: cross-border acceptance and settlement, interoperability between different digital currency systems, and programmable risk control mechanisms such as identity verification, sanction screening, and transaction control. At present, the participating parties also include Airwallex, Mastercard, Maybank, Monee, Niu, Ripple, ShopeePay, Visa, and the World Bank Group. Relevant institutions will promote the application of digital currencies around payment, fund management, and trade financing scenarios. MAS stated that the plan aims to reduce the cost of cross market deployment for financial institutions and shorten the time for product implementation through a unified implementation framework and commercial operation arrangements.