UK Banks Complete First Live Tokenized Sterling Deposit Payments

Major UK banks have carried out the first live customer payments using tokenized sterling deposits on shared infrastructure, according to UK Finance. The participating institutions include Barclays, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest, and Santander. The project uses real commercialbank deposits rather than a stablecoin or a central bank digital currency. Its goal is to preserve the protections of ordinary bank money while adding faster settlement and programmable features that can work across institutions. The pilot is testing realworld use cases such as persontoperson transfers and remortgage payments, with digitalasset settlement also expected to be explored in the coming months. The effort is being supported by Quant, EY, and Linklaters, and is designed to show how tokenized bank money could operate across the wider financial system.