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SEA Daily Brief: Malaysia and Japan Sign a $6 Billion Swap Deal, Bitdeer Adds 65.1MW to Its Johor AI Campus, and Manila Explores India's UPI Rails

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Japan signed a third bilateral swap arrangement worth up to $6 billion alongside a separate memorandum to promote local-currency trade settlement, deepening Malaysia-Japan financial ties outside the dollar system. In Johor, Bitdeer AI secured a 65.1MW facility on its existing campus, pushing its estimated AI Cloud pipeline above $7 billion. In New Delhi, President Marcos advanced talks with India's NPCI International and LandBank to explore a UPI-based payment system for the Philippines.

September 15, 20264 min readMalaysia · Japan · Philippines · India · AI Infrastructure · FinTech · Central Banks
Photorealistic photograph of a central bank headquarters exterior in Kuala Lumpur at pre-dawn blue hour, illuminated stone-and-glass facade against a darkening sky with the city skyline behind, two office workers in silhouette crossing the forecourt toward the entrance.
Bank Negara Malaysia, which signed a third currency-swap arrangement with the Bank of Japan this week.

Malaysia and Japan Sign a Third $6 Billion Bilateral Swap Arrangement and a Local-Currency Settlement Pact

Bank Negara Malaysia and the Bank of Japan, acting as agent for Japan's Ministry of Finance, signed their third Bilateral Swap Arrangement on September 15, with a maximum swap amount of up to $6 billion, effective September 18, 2026, according to BusinessToday and Xinhua. The arrangement is a two-way facility: either side can draw US dollars against its own currency, and it separately allows BNM to exchange ringgit directly for yen. Japan's Ministry of Finance and BNM also signed a memorandum of cooperation establishing a framework to promote settlement of trade and investment in local currencies, with both authorities agreeing to encourage use of ringgit and yen in eligible cross-border transactions, backed by ongoing information-sharing and periodic discussions between the two governments.

The swap arrangement follows a pattern of Malaysia renewing or expanding bilateral currency lines with regional and Asian partners in recent years, including with China and Indonesia, as part of a broader push to reduce reliance on US dollar intermediation for trade settlement.

Sources

Bitdeer AI Secures a 65.1MW Facility at Its Johor Campus, Pipeline Tops $7 Billion

Bitdeer AI said on September 14 it has entered a 10-year data-centre services agreement for A202, a 65.1MW AI Cloud facility on its existing Johor Bahru, Malaysia campus, alongside its 21.7MW A201 facility — bringing combined campus capacity to 86.8MW, according to a company press release. The company said A202 is its largest single capacity addition to date in Southeast Asia and is designed for liquid-cooled Nvidia systems including the GB300 NVL72 and upcoming Vera Rubin platforms, with energization targeted for Q3 2027. Bitdeer's estimated active AI Cloud pipeline now exceeds $7 billion, up from roughly $2 billion a month earlier, and its total secured AI Cloud capacity across Malaysia, Norway and the US stands at approximately 206.5MW — about 59% of its 350MW target for early 2028.

Bitdeer CFO Michael Potter said demand for liquid-cooled, rack-scale AI Cloud capacity in 2027 is running ahead of what the market can supply, and the company expects to have A202's capacity contracted before it becomes operational, consistent with its earlier 9.5MW A102 facility, which sold out ahead of energization with more than $800 million in expected revenue from five-year commitments.

Sources

Manila Advances Talks With India's NPCI on a UPI-Based Payment System

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., meeting Indian companies in New Delhi on the sidelines of the 18th BRICS Summit on September 12-13, advanced discussions with NPCI International Limited on digital-payments cooperation, including a proposed partnership with state-owned Landbank of the Philippines to explore adopting a payment system modeled on India's Unified Payments Interface, according to Philstar and thephilbiznews.com. Trade and Industry Secretary Cristina Roque said the initiative would apply UPI capabilities first to government-to-person payments, potentially speeding delivery of financial assistance, before extending to broader QR-payment interoperability for overseas Filipino workers, small businesses and consumers. The Department of Trade and Industry said it would coordinate technical implementation with the Department of Finance, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Landbank and PNPI-BancNet.

The meetings also produced non-payments commitments, including roughly $75 million in new and scaled-up Philippine investment pledges from the iSON Group across agritech, healthcare and business-process outsourcing, and continued talks with GMR Group and Cavitex Holdings on the Sangley Point International Airport project.

Sources

Eyes on the Day Ahead

Watch for the formal effective date of the Malaysia-Japan swap arrangement on September 18, and for FinTech Week Singapore, which opens September 16 with sessions on agentic AI and tokenization infrastructure that could surface fresh regional announcements.

Layer 7 Ventures is a research-driven firm focused on AI and cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia. Views expressed are those of the firm and do not constitute investment advice.

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SEA Daily Brief: Malaysia's Budget 2027 Proposes Tokenised Retail Sukuk, Singapore Licenses Large Data Centres, and the NSRC Plans an AI Scam-Check App

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim proposed a blockchain-based retail savings sukuk in Budget 2027, tabled on 9 October, with no launch date, minimum investment or return disclosed. Singapore's Parliament passed the Digital Infrastructure Bill on 7 October, creating licensing regimes for data centres of 10MW or more and large cloud providers. Malaysia's National Scam Response Centre also plans an AI application to check suspicious numbers, accounts and links, with no funding or launch date stated.

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