UK Regulators Push Tokenization, Digital Money for Future Retail Payments

UK regulators are calling for tokenization and “new forms of digital money” to be part of the core infrastructure of the country's future retail payment ecosystem.

In a Thursday update to the government's roadmap for modernizing retail payment systems, HM Treasury on behalf of the Payments Vision Delivery Committee said that including tokenization and digital money would advance its efforts to create a “diverse multi-money ecosystem.”

“Programmable payments, including those that rely on tokenization,” were named as potential “product-level arrangements” that may support payment innovation in the country, the agency update said.

The update of November's National Payments Vision document calls for infrastructure that enables emerging forms of digital money to interact with traditional payment systems.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) earlier this week published its landmark crypto regulatory framework and said that the licensing window for crypto companies will open from September until Feb. 28, 2027, before the regime goes live on Oct. 25, 2027.

Under that framework, cryptocurrency firms, including trading platforms, custodians, stablecoin issuers, staking companies and other intermediaries, must obtain FCA authorization to operate in the UK under the new framework.

In April, the UK government said it would revisit its payments rulebook to support the adoption of new payment technologies, including stablecoins and tokenization.

It said that would include a consultation on reforms for payment services and electronic money rules to create a single framework for traditional and tokenized payments, including stablecoins and tokenized deposits, according to an April 21 announcement by HM Treasury and Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby.

The following month, the Bank of England (BoE) proposed extending operating hours for its core settlement infrastructure toward near-24/7 availability, as part of a broader push with the FCA to prepare UK wholesale markets for tokenized finance.

The BoE said the expanded operating hours would support cross-border payments and new payment and settlement models as tokenization develops. The central bank is seeking public feedback on the proposal until July 3 and plans to publish a feedback statement in the summer.

The FCA said just days earlier that tokenization and distributed ledger technologies could make fund management more efficient and support the innovation of the UK asset management sector.