MAS launches BLOOM initiative to extend settlement capabilities

The digital asset revolution is no longer a fringe movement; it is a foundational shift in financial infrastructure. Leading this transformation is the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which has once again cemented its reputation as a global fintech pioneer with the launch of BLOOM—a new initiative set to redefine how money moves across borders.

BLOOM is an acronym for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency. More than just a catchy name, it represents a concerted effort to expand settlement capabilities among financial institutions using tokenized bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins. This move is not merely an incremental upgrade; it is an analytical leap forward in making digital settlement assets a practical reality for wholesale finance.

BLOOM does not emerge from a vacuum; it builds directly upon the extensive groundwork laid by Project Orchid. Project Orchid spent years exploring use cases for a digital Singapore dollar and the necessary supporting infrastructure, conducting over ten trials since its establishment in 2021. BLOOM takes these learnings and translates them into market-ready commercial offerings by extending the range of settlement asset options for participants. As MAS’s Chief FinTech Officer, Kenneth Gay, notes, BLOOM enhances the settlement options and complements other key initiatives like Project Guardian (asset tokenization) and Global Layer One (foundational infrastructures).

The true significance of BLOOM lies in its targeted approach to solving three major friction points in modern wholesale finance:

1. Distribution and Clearing of Settlement Assets: Cross-border settlement often involves siloed, disparate networks. BLOOM aims to coordinate these systems to enable the seamless use, transfer, and redemption of different forms of settlement assets. This focuses on interoperability, ensuring that a Singapore dollar, whether a bank deposit, tokenized deposit, or stablecoin, always holds its parity. Initial participants tackling this include global players like Circle, Stripe, DBS, OCBC, Partior, and UOB.
2. Programmable Controls for Compliance: Compliance, especially across borders, is a major source of cost and delay. By focusing on programmable controls, BLOOM seeks to automate and standardize compliance checks. This creates more consistency and significantly lowers the cost of compliance for cross-border wholesale settlement arrangements. Ant International and StraitsX are among the members working on this aspect.
3. Agentic Payments: This forward-looking area explores the use of AI agents to execute transactions automatically within pre-defined limits and conditions. The goal is to reduce the burden of manual payment management and optimize costs by timing transfers when conditions are most favorable. Coinbase and DBS are involved in this exploration.

BLOOM is ambitious in its scope, encompassing both domestic and cross-border payments involving a wide array of currencies, including G10 and Asian currencies. Its wholesale use cases—such as corporate treasury management, trade finance, and agentic payments—demonstrate a focus on high-value, high-friction segments of the financial market.

By standardizing the use of these digital settlement assets and fostering collaboration between traditional financial institutions (like JP Morgan, DBS, OCBC, UOB) and crypto firms (like Circle, Coinbase, StraitsX), MAS is not just facilitating innovation—it is governing it responsibly. This approach is key to managing risks in the rapidly evolving digital asset landscape.

In short, MAS’s BLOOM initiative is more than a pilot program; it is the blueprint for the next generation of global financial infrastructure. By addressing the operational and implementation challenges of digital settlement assets head-on, Singapore is not just participating in the tokenized finance revolution—it is positioning itself as the central, liquid, and regulated clearing hub of the future.