The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced a new initiative – BLOOM (Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency) – to extend settlement capabilities offered by financial institutions. Through BLOOM, MAS will collaborate with the financial industry to enable settlement in tokenised bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins, while effectively managing risks in the rapidly evolving digital settlement asset landscape through standardised approaches. Building on Project Orchid’s foundation BLOOM builds upon the groundwork established through Project Orchid, which explored use cases for a digital Singapore dollar and the infrastructure required to support it. Established in 2021, more than 10 trials have been successfully conducted as part of Project Orchid. Insights from these trials have culminated in industry reports detailing practical real-world applications. Participating financial institutions have since translated their learnings into market-ready commercial offerings. BLOOM caters to the growing interest among private sector participants in tokenised bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins as settlement assets, and encompasses: Multiple currencies: Use of G10 and Asian currencies. Domestic and cross-border payments: Cross-border payments and settlement. Wholesale use cases: Examples include corporate treasury management, trade finance, and agentic payments. Industry collaboration BLOOM members will collaborate to address challenges and opportunities of common interest to the industry. Initial focus areas include: Distribution and clearing of settlement assets. The aim is to coordinate disparate networks and enable the seamless use, transfer, and redemption of different forms of settlement assets. Members working on this include Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe, and UOB. Programmable controls to enhance and automate compliance checks. The use of standardised mechanisms for compliance checks enables more consistency in implementations and lowers cost of compliance. This will enable more cost-effective cross-border wholesale settlement arrangements. Members working on this include Ant International and StraitsX. Agentic payments for seamless and automated transactions. This will explore the use of AI agents that execute transactions automatically within pre-defined limits and conditions. The goal is to reduce the burden of managing payments manually and optimise costs by timing transfers when conditions are most favourable. Members working on this include Coinbase and DBS. MAS welcomed the initial members of BLOOM who bring their collective expertise and global perspectives to the initiative. It looks forward to partnering additional financial institutions, industry partners, and regulatory bodies to advance BLOOM’s objectives. Banks, financial institutions, and clearing and settlement network operators are invited to conduct trials under BLOOM. 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. By addressing the operational and implementation challenges of settlement assets, BLOOM helps financial institutions enhance their digital asset capabilities and catalyses the next wave of financial innovation.” Redisseminated by The Asian Banker
