The Bank of England has introduced a new testing program to study how tokenized assets could settle in pounds through synchronized processes.
The goal is to support ongoing upgrades to the UK’s real-time gross settlement system.
The program, called the Synchronisation Lab, gives 18 selected firms a controlled space to run tests. They will try delivery-versus-payment and payment-versus-payment settlement between the bank’s upcoming RTGS core ledger, RT2, and external distributed-ledger systems.
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The pilot will last six months and begin in spring 2026. It aims to confirm the bank’s design choices for synchronized settlement, check how central bank money interacts with tokenized assets, and provide evidence for a possible future live RTGS synchronization feature.
The bank first announced the plan in October 2025. The final group includes market-infrastructure companies, banks, fintech firms, and decentralized-technology teams.
Their use cases include tokenized securities settlement, collateral processes, foreign exchange, and digital money issuance.
Two Web3 firms, Chainlink and UAC Labs, will test decentralized methods for coordinating synchronized settlement between central bank money and assets on distributed-ledger platforms. Ctrl Alt and Monee will work on delivery-versus-payment for tokenized gilts and other securities.
Tokenovate and Atumly will test conditional margin payments and digital-money issuance and redemption that link to RTGS settlement. Swift and LSEG are also part of the group.
Recently, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers that traditional banking and crypto services may become more alike in the years ahead. How? Read the full story.
