TL;DR
- Bank Negara Malaysia said DAIH will onboard three 2026 initiatives this year using ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits for wholesale payments.
- One project is a B2B ringgit stablecoin settlement led by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and Capital A; Maybank and CIMB lead tokenized deposit pilots.
- BNM targets clearer rules by end 2026 and may link pilots to wholesale CBDC work, echoing efforts in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.
Malaysia is moving its digital money roadmap into a supervised test phase as Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) onboards three initiatives for 2026 involving ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits. BNM is signaling innovation is welcome, but only inside wholesale payment corridors. In a Wednesday announcement, the central bank said the Digital Asset Innovation Hub (DAIH) will test domestic and cross border settlement flows to inform policy, supervision, and expectations for banks, corporates, and utilities across the ecosystem.
Three pilots, policy clarity, and regional momentum
DAIH’s published project list includes a B2B ringgit stablecoin settlement initiative led by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and Capital A. The design focus is institutional settlement efficiency, not consumer distribution or speculative trading. The initiative targets wholesale payment rails where participants validate transfer mechanics, reconciliation, and controls under oversight. By keeping the scope narrow, the sandbox can surface frictions in liquidity, reporting, governance, and cross border messaging that impacts final settlement and resilience.
Two other DAIH projects focus on tokenized deposits for payments, spearheaded by Maybank and CIMB. Tokenized deposits are being treated as programmable bank money that must prove itself in controlled trials. BNM said testing will help it assess implications for monetary and financial stability and inform policy direction. Operationally, that means measuring how tokenized balances move, how participants manage compliance checks, and how settlement finality and contingency procedures behave in workflows under stress.
BNM said it intends to provide greater clarity on ringgit stablecoins and tokenized deposits by end 2026. The pilots are positioned as evidence gathering that converts experimentation into enforceable guardrails. The central bank added the initiatives could integrate with its existing work on wholesale CBDCs, signaling a pathway to interoperability between tokenized bank money, ringgit stablecoins, and central bank rails. For participants, that sets expectations around governance, disclosure, reporting, and risk ownership before scaling.
BNM’s move mirrors an Asian push toward regulated stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Malaysia is benchmarking against peers that pair rulemaking with supervised pilots led by institutions. Hong Kong set a stablecoin licensing regime last year and is running Project Ensemble for tokenized deposits. Singapore established a stablecoin framework last year and promotes tokenized deposit trials under Project Guardian. Japan saw JPYC launch in late 2025, while MUFG, SMBC, and Mizuho began corporate payment pilots in 2025.
