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Monument Bank to Tokenize £250 Million of Retail Deposits on Privacy-Focused Network

The project signals a push to bring blockchain into regulated retail banking.

Overview

  • Monument Bank, which announced the plan Wednesday, will move up to £250 million of customer balances onto the Midnight blockchain.
  • The tokens are claims on pound balances held at the bank, keep earning interest, remain redeemable one-for-one, and stay covered by the U.K.'s Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
  • Midnight restricts transaction visibility to the bank and each account holder, a design meant to meet U.K. privacy and compliance needs.
  • The phased rollout targets mass-affluent clients as Monument mirrors savings balances on Midnight from a base of over 100,000 customers and about £7 billion in deposits.
  • The roadmap adds tokenized private-market and commodity funds with in-app lending, and the bank plans to offer the same technology to other institutions through Monument Technology and its Banking-as-a-Service unit.