The central bank of Malaysia has planned to roll out three actions in 2026 that comprise local currency stablecoins and tokenised deposits. The February 11 announcement noted that the Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) revealed the Digital Asset Innovation Hub (DAIH) is taking three projects onboard for this year.
The projects will focus on wholesale payment use cases over both domestic and cross-border transactions. Talking about DAIH, it is a regulatory testbed of Malaysia to encourage crypto-linked innovation.
The official DAIH website shows a B2B Ringgit stablecoin settlement step headed by Standard Chartered Bank Malaysia and Capital A. Some other projects aimed at tokenised deposits for payments are led by Maybank and CIMB.
BNM noted in an announcement that the testing will permit BNM to evaluate the implications for monetary and financial stability and tell our policy direction in these stated areas. It is noteworthy that BNM aims to offer greater clarity on the use of ringgit stablecoins and tokenised deposits by the end of this year.
BNM also mentioned that these measures could be amalgamated with the central bank’s recent work on wholesale CBDCs. These steps show a wider trend in Asia, where the majority of economies have surged stablecoin and tokenised deposit efforts in the past few years.
Hong Kong set up its licensing regime on stablecoins in 2025, having the preliminary batch of stablecoins anticipated this year. It is also functioning on Project Ensemble, testing tokenised deposits having prominent banks and institutions.
Singapore also introduced a stablecoin framework in 2024 and, at the same time, promoted tokenised deposit trials under Project Guardian. Talking about other countries, Japan also witnessed its first Japanese-yen-pegged stablecoin, JPYC, rolled out towards the end of 2025, while three major banks, MUFG, SMBG, and Mizuho, kicked off joint pilots last year for stablecoins in corporate payments.
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