Seven major UK financial institutions have completed their first live customer transactions using tokenized sterling deposits. The initiative, known as the Great British Tokenised Deposit (GBTD), was organized by UK Finance to evaluate the efficiency of programmable commercial bank money in payments and settlements.
The pilot program included two remortgage completions and one consumer-to-consumer marketplace transaction. In the remortgage cases, funds were automatically locked and released upon completion, allowing customers to earn interest until the final settlement. This approach aims to minimize manual processing and delays.
For the marketplace purchase, the system kept funds locked until the buyer confirmed receipt of the goods, which serves to mitigate transaction risks. All operations were executed on the GBTD platform, which was built by Quant to serve as shared infrastructure for tokenized commercial bank money.
The participating banks include Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander. These institutions aim to integrate commercial bank money into digital networks while maintaining the protections and trust associated with traditional deposits.
Looking ahead, the initiative plans to conduct further pilots. These future tests will focus on connecting tokenized deposits with digital assets and evaluating settlement processes involving delivery-versus-payment-versus-reserves.
