The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has launched BLOOM (Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency), a new initiative to expand settlement capabilities among financial institutions.

BLOOM will work with the financial industry to facilitate settlement using tokenised bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins, while promoting standardised risk management practices in the digital settlement asset landscape.

BLOOM builds on the foundation of Project Orchid, which examined potential use cases for a digital Singapore dollar and the necessary supporting infrastructure.

Since its launch in 2021, Project Orchid has conducted over ten trials, resulting in several industry reports detailing real-world applications.

Insights from these trials have led participating institutions to develop market-ready commercial solutions.

The initiative addresses growing interest in using tokenised bank liabilities and regulated stablecoins as settlement assets across multiple currencies, including G10 and Asian currencies.

It supports both domestic and cross-border payments, focusing on wholesale use cases such as corporate treasury management, trade finance, and agentic payments.

BLOOM’s members will collaborate on shared challenges and opportunities.

Their initial efforts will focus on three areas: first, improving the distribution and clearing of settlement assets to coordinate different networks and enable the seamless transfer and redemption of various assets.

Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe, and UOB are among the institutions working on this.

Second, developing programmable compliance controls to automate and standardise checks, making cross-border wholesale settlements more consistent and cost-effective.

Ant International and StraitsX are leading work in this area.

Third, exploring agentic payments using AI to automate transactions under predefined conditions, reducing manual intervention and optimising transfer timing. Coinbase and DBS are participating in this effort.

MAS welcomed the initial members of BLOOM, acknowledging their expertise and global perspectives.

The authority invited additional financial institutions, industry partners, and regulatory bodies to join the initiative and conduct trials.

Kenneth Gay, Chief Fintech Officer at MAS, said,

“Project Orchid established the technical competencies necessary to support the digital Singapore dollar and explored potential use cases for it. BLOOM takes this further, enhancing the range of settlement asset options for participants. This complements ongoing MAS-industry collaboration on asset tokenisation under Project Guardian and foundational infrastructures under the Global Layer One initiative.”

Featured image credit: Edited by Fintech News Singapore, based on image by mrsiraphol and yeven_popov via Freepik