UK’s largest banks complete world’s first interbank transactions using tokenized deposits
Barclays, NatWest, and HSBC and others used tokenized deposits for remortgages and a marketplace-payment test, taking bank-issued digital cash beyond a single institution.
The U.K.'s largest banks executed the world’s first customer transaction using tokenized British pound deposits on a share platform.
The money movement included remortgage payments and a test of a consumer purchase, according to an announcement on Thursday.
The project is testing whether regulated bank money can move in tokenized form between institutions and in retail payments. The deposits moving across a common system involving several banks differs from a recent initiative by Lloyds to use tokenized deposits to buy a tokenized gilt within its own arrangement.
The group will next test the settlement of digital assets using tokenized customer money, according to the announcement.