UK Finance has launched a collaborative industry pilot project to deliver the first UK live transactions of tokenised sterling deposits (GBTD).
These tokenised deposits are a digital representation of traditional sterling commercial bank money. They retain the trust and regulatory protections of conventional deposits, while offering benefits such as enhanced speed and fraud protection.
Building on the successes of the UK Regulated Liability Network (RLN) project’s earlier phases, this pilot phase will position the UK as a leader in payments innovation, delivering tokenised deposits and programmable payments against three use cases.
. Person-to-person payments via online marketplaces: reducing fraud and enhancing buyer and seller confidence.
. Remortgaging processes: improving transparency, speeding up transactions, and mitigating conveyancing fraud.
. Digital asset settlement: connecting tokenised customer money to digital assets for seamless exchange.
„The pilot will run until mid-2026 and aims to demonstrate tangible benefits to customers, businesses and the wider UK economy. These include giving users greater control over their payments, stronger fraud prevention, and more efficient settlement processes.” – according to the press release.
„This project forms a vital part of the UK’s efforts to deliver next-generation money and payments via GBTD, by applying new digital technologies to the form of money most widely used by consumers and businesses today. It will also enable UK commercial bank money to support government ambitions for growth and innovation, like the current plans for a digital gilt (DIGIT) and the National Payments Vision (NPV).” – UK Finance explained.
Also, „the platform will be fully interoperable between new forms of digital money, payment systems and institutions. It also offers tokenisation-as-a-service, ensuring that organisations without their own tokenised deposit capabilities can participate”.
Participating firms currently include Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Nationwide, and Santander, with support from Quant, EY and Linklaters.
UK Finance will host engagements and events throughout the pilot to provide all stakeholders with updates on the work and next steps and encourage stakeholders to express their interest in the work here. A webinar with further details will be held on 6 October, and can be registered for here.
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