The UK's biggest banks are pushing ahead with the experimentation phase of a Regulated Liability Network, a financial market infrastructure for programmable money operating on a multi-bank shared ledger.
The UK RLN is envisaged as a common ‘platform for innovation’ across multiple forms of money, including existing commercial bank deposits and a shared ledger for tokenised commercial bank deposits.
Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds, Mastercard, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered, Virgin Money and Visa are all taking part in the latest phase of the project, which will focus on several use cases:
use cases:
- Payment-upon-delivery for a physical product, aimed at reducing fraud in online marketplaces.
- The process of buying a home, improving customer transparency, and mitigating conveyancing fraud.
- A digital bond settlement, to connect digital customer money to digital assets.
Running until the summer, the effort - joined by EY and a tech team of R3, Quant, DXC and Coadjute - will explore customer and business benefits, technical feasibility, and the legal framework.
Kate Karimson, chief commercial officer, R3, says: “The RLN initiative is bringing the industry together to work towards a shared goal - harnessing the benefits of tokenised finance in a manner that is regulated, orderly and interoperable.”