Overview
- The package, announced Tuesday during London Fintech Week, lays out a single framework that covers traditional payments, stablecoins used in payments, and tokenized bank deposits.
- The government will expand the FCA’s role over Open Banking and plans to bring the Payments Systems Regulator into the FCA to simplify oversight.
- HM Treasury will consult on rewriting payments and e‑money rules and on how to let AI agents make payments safely, and it will propose laws to ease approvals for stablecoin payment providers.
- Chris Woolard CBE will lead work on tokenised wholesale markets as Wholesale Digital Markets Champion, and £1 million will go to CFIT to fund pilots and industry collaboration.
- Press reports say systemic pound stablecoins would face joint supervision by the Bank of England and the FCA under the model now in development, which could widen payment choices without weakening consumer protection.