UK Finance is coordinating the country’s six largest banking groups in live tokenized deposit pilots referred to as GBDT. The banks involved are Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, NatWest, Nationwide and Santander, with the pilot running until mid-2026. A year ago UK Finance led a group of 11 banks in experimentation as part of the Regulated Liability Network.

The tokenized deposit pilots will include programmable payments and have three goals: tackling fraud in online marketplace payments, speeding up the remortgage process, and enabling on-chain settlement of tokenized asset transactions. This aligns with the planned issuance of a DIGIT government bond and UK’s Digital Securities Sandbox.

Ledger Insights Pro subscribers can access research articles on tokenized deposit designs.

While some participating banks already possess tokenization infrastructure, a tokenization-as-a-service solution will be available for others. A key goal is to achieve interoperability with other new forms of money and payment systems. This likely includes stablecoins, and perhaps the Fnality wholesale settlement system, although that remains to be seen, as only Barclays, Lloyds and Santander are members. Quant, EY and Linklaters are supporting the project.

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