The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced Thursday a new initiative – BLOOM (Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency), to extend settlement capabilities offered by financial institutions.
MAS said in a statement that through BLOOM, it will collaborate with the financial industry to enable settlement in tokenized bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins, whilst effectively managing risks in the rapidly evolving digital settlement asset landscape, through standardized approaches.
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 report 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 tokenized bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins as settlement assets.
It 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).
BLOOM members will collaborate to address challenges and opportunities of common interest to the industry.
Their initial focus areas include distribution and clearing of settlement assets, which aims 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.
They also focus on programmable controls to enhance and automate compliance checks. The use of standardized mechanisms for compliance checks, enable more consistency in implementations and lower cost of compliance. This will enable more cost-effective cross-border wholesale settlement arrangements. Members working on this include Ant International and StraitsX.
The focuses also include 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. This seeks to reduce the burden of managing payments manually and optimize costs by timing transfers to when conditions are most favorable. Members working on this include Coinbase and DBS.
MAS said it welcomes the initial members of BLOOM who bring their collective expertise and global perspectives to the initiative.
It also looks forward to partner additional financial institutions, industry partners and fellow regulatory bodies to advance BLOOM’s objectives.
It also welcomes banks, financial institutions, and clearing and settlement network operators to conduct trials under BLOOM.
“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,” said Kenneth Gay, Chief FinTech Officer, MAS.
According to him, this complements ongoing MAS-industry collaboration on asset tokenization 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 catalyze the next wave of financial innovation,” he added.
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