Bank of England tests stablecoin, digital pound interoperability in cross-border payments
The Bank of England’s Digital Pound Lab is testing how stablecoins and a possible digital pound could work together in a cross-border trade-finance payment flow. The experiment, involving NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet, and Polygon Labs, simulates an exporter receiving an advance over a stablecoin rail while a UK importer settles with digital pounds. A related workstream aims to build reusable credit profiles for small businesses using transaction data, open-finance data, and commercial risk data, supported by Polygon’s smart contracts. The goal is to reduce settlement delays and working-capital pressure for smaller exporters and importers. The lab uses no real customers or money, and participation does not imply Bank of England policy support or commitment to issue a digital pound. The trial sits alongside UK efforts to regulate systemic stablecoins and modernize payment infrastructure for tokenized finance.
