Visa announced August 25, 2026 that it has joined BLOOM, an initiative led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) that focuses on digital settlement assets. Its first pilot under the program, with Singapore-based cross-border payments company Nium, uses regulated stablecoins denominated in US dollars and euros. Settlement is the step in which two institutions finally discharge the obligation a payment creates between them.
The pilot tests whether regulated dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins can settle payments seven days a week, including weekends and public holidays. “Today, payment settlements typically take place on business days,” the Visa release notes, and the resulting gaps delay institutions’ access to funds.
“The future of payments will be shaped by how different forms of money and payment networks work together for different use cases,” said Adeline Kim, Visa’s group country manager for regional Southeast Asia. She said Visa is “exploring how stablecoins can complement existing payment infrastructure.” Amaresh Mohan, Nium’s chief risk and compliance officer, called the pilot “a meaningful step in our partnership to shape the next phase of payments in the region.”
MAS set BLOOM’s scope at launch
BLOOM, short for Borderless, Liquid, Open, Online, Multi-currency, was launched by Singapore’s central bank on October 16, 2025. Its launch release sets out the goal in one sentence: to “enable settlement in tokenised bank liabilities and well-regulated stablecoins, whilst effectively managing risks in the rapidly evolving digital settlement asset landscape, through standardised approaches.” The initiative builds on Project Orchid, started in 2021, which ran more than 10 trials around a digital Singapore dollar.
MAS defined the initiative’s scope along three lines:
- Currencies: G10 and Asian currencies.
- Flows: domestic and cross-border payments and settlement.
- Use cases: wholesale ones, such as corporate treasury management, trade finance, and agentic payments.
The release defines agentic payments as “financial transactions that are initiated and executed by AI agents on behalf of an organisation, with appropriate guardrails in place.” The definition appears in a footnote to BLOOM’s founding release, not in a later document.
Members are split across three workstreams, whose makeup MAS published at launch.
| Workstream | Aim | Members named by MAS |
|---|---|---|
| Distribution and clearing of settlement assets | Coordinate separate networks so different forms of settlement assets can be used, transferred, and redeemed | Circle, DBS, OCBC, Partior, Stripe, UOB |
| Programmable controls | Automate compliance checks through standardized mechanisms, applying the Programmable Compliance Toolkit developed under the Global Layer One initiative | Ant International, StraitsX |
| Agentic payments | Have AI agents execute transactions automatically within predefined limits and conditions | Coinbase, DBS |
A card network enters a supervised sandbox
The list of 16 initial members, published in an annex to the MAS release, included no card network. It had six banks: DBS, OCBC, UOB, J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered, and Kasikorn Bank. It also had four digital asset firms (Anchorage Digital, Circle, Coinbase, StraitsX), two settlement infrastructures (Partior, Xweave), the payment service provider Stripe, the asset manager Schroders, the investor Temasek, and Ant International. Maybank Singapore joined on August 6, 2026. Tech Times describes Visa as the first card network to join.
Nium had already taken part in a stablecoin settlement pilot with Visa that uses Circle’s USDC, according to TechNode Global. Joining BLOOM moves that work from a bilateral arrangement into a framework where the regulator sets common rules and lessons are shared among members.
The program matters because of where it sits in the chain. Settlement comes after authorization and clearing, out of the cardholder’s view, and it drives the liquidity and risk that institutions carry. A central bank that runs the trials on this link itself gets a direct view of the private arrangements forming there, a view that after-the-fact supervision does not provide.