The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on 23 October that Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand have officially joined the BLOOM cross-border digital currency initiative to jointly advance cross-border payment and settlement using regulated stablecoins, tokenised deposits and other digital currencies. New participants to the initiative include Ripple, Visa, Mastercard, Airwallex and the World Bank Group. It focuses on cross-border settlement, interoperability across different payment networks and programmable compliance controls, aiming to cut cross-border transaction costs for financial institutions.