The UK’s central bank is set to launch an onchain settlement infrastructure pilot.
As part of efforts to modernize the UK's general settlement (RTGS) infrastructure, the Bank of England has launched a new industry trial initiative to explore how to tokenize assets denominated in British pounds sterling.
The Synchronization Lab initiative will enable 18 selected companies to test remittances and payments with payments between the BoE's next-generation RTGS core registry RT2 and external distributed ledger platforms.
The six-month pilot, scheduled to begin in spring 2026, is intended to align the central bank's design preferences, evaluate the interaction between central bank money and tokenized assets, and inform a potential future live RTGS synchronization capability.
First announced in October, the initiative brings together 18 participants including market infrastructure providers, banks, fintechs and decentralized technology companies to explore issues related to tokenized securities settlement, collateral facilitation, foreign exchange and digital-money supply.
Among the Web3 participants, Chainlink and UAC Labs will test decentralized approaches to coordinate consensus between central bank money and assets on distributed ledger platforms. Companies like Ctrl Alt and Monee focus on delivery and payment of tokenized gilts and other securities.
Other participants, including Tokenovate and Atumly, are designed to coordinate conditional payout workflows and digital-money supply and redemption flows with RTGS. The roster also includes Swift and LSEG.
The bank stated that the laboratory initiative will be used to refine the design of RTGS synchronization capabilities and support further development activities; At the conclusion of the program, participants are expected to present their use cases and findings.
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International central banks expand pilots
The Bank of England is among a list of central banks exploring how tokens, programmable settlements and digital currencies could improve their core financial and payment systems.
In May, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank for International Settlements published a study from Project Pine examining how smart contracts could support monetary policy in tokenized financial systems, including an example of fast and flexible central bank actions on programmable ledgers.
In October, Singapore's Monetary Authority announced BLOOM, an initiative aimed at expanding settlement infrastructure to support transactions in bank debt and stabilize the Santino coin.
Beyond tokenization pilots focused on settlement and market infrastructure, central banks have been conducting experiments with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
In Australia, the central bank launched a mass digital currency trial in July using stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits and a pilot CBDC.
Following that, the United Arab Emirates completed its first payment in digital dirhams in November, and China-led mBridge reported in January that $55 billion of cross-border CDC transactions had taken place in multiple jurisdictions.
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