Bank of England to test stablecoin, digital currency use in cross-border finance
The Bank of England has launched the second phase of its digital pound project to test the integration of stablecoins and central bank money in trade finance. The initiative involves partnerships with firms like Polygon Labs and Dun & Bradstreet to improve efficiency for small businesses.
Why it matters
This experiment represents a significant step toward modernizing international trade finance infrastructure using distributed ledger technology.
By moving its digital pound exploration into Phase 2, the BOE is testing whether public stablecoin infrastructure and central bank money can coexist in a single payment flow for trade finance, it said Wednesday. The BOE has been experimenting with a central bank digital currency (CBDC) and the distributed-ledger technology that forms the backbone of the blockchain since 2024.
Central banks worldwide are exploring how to regulate private stablecoins, which are crypto tokens whose value is pegged to a fiat currency, alongside potential state-issued digital versions of their currencies, or CBDCs. At the heart of the experiment is the improvement of trade finance, which would particularly benefit small businesses, according to Otto Jacobsson, U.K. chapter lead at the Digital Assets Association. Trade-finance delays make it harder for those firms to prove creditworthiness and access funding, he said.
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