The Monetary Authority of Singapore said Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Thailand are joining its BLOOM initiative on cross-border settlement in digital money. The three central banks will work with the private sector in three areas: acceptance and settlement, interoperability between systems, and programmable controls. Participants include companies such as Airwallex, Mastercard, Ripple and Visa. No specific payment corridors or launch date were announced.

What it means: South-east Asia is moving quickly to link its national payment systems, and BLOOM looks at how tokenised money, whether deposits or regulated stablecoins, can be used for payments between countries. Programmable controls mean that rules such as limits or compliance checks are built into the transaction itself. For Europe and Greece the interest is comparative. The ECB is preparing ways to settle DLT transactions in central bank money, and the euro area already has a single instant payment system. Greek exporters dealing with Asia often pay high fees and wait days for transfers, so any improvement in international corridors would bring a direct benefit. The presence of the big card networks shows they do not want to be left out of the new infrastructure. There is no timetable yet, though, so this is an experimental stage rather than a service a business can use today. For Greek fintechs, following such projects helps them understand which standards will win in international payments in the coming years and where there may be room for connecting services.

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