Financial services provider UK Finance has announced its plans to work on an additional UK Regulated Liability Network (RLN) experimentation phase with eleven of its members. As per the information detailed in the press release, the UK RLN is seen as a common platform for innovation across several forms of money, including existing commercial bank deposits and a shared record for tokenised commercial bank deposits.

UK Finance’s RLN experimentation strategy By partnering with several stakeholders within the financial services industry, the UK RLN experiments with the options for users to make payments, transact, and settle liabilities in digital marketplaces. Currently, UK Finance’s collaborators include Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered, Virgin Money, and Visa. In addition, they are assisted by EY and Linklaters and a technology team of R3, Quant, DXC, and Coadjute.

As part of this alliance, customers, businesses, and the wider UK economy are set to receive the ability to provide users with more options to manage their payments, improved fraud mitigations, and enhanced settlement capabilities. The press release underlined that the UK RLN experimentation phase is set to focus on several use cases including payment-upon-delivery for a physical product, intended to minimise fraud in online marketplaces, enhance customer transparency, and mitigate conveyancing fraud, and a digital bond settlement, to connect digital customer money to digital assets. Through these use cases, UK Finance aims to analyse how the UK RLN can facilitate different forms of money, such as existing and tokenised deposits. The company plans to have the experimentation phase run until the end of summer 2024 and is set to cover: Customer and business advantages by exploring foundational capabilities which align with the BIS and Bank of England’s Project Rosalind experiments for an application programming interface for a potential digital pound; Technical achievability through proof of concept via a technology sandbox to receive the functional and non-functional requirements of the UK RLN design, including simulated connections and transactions; Legal framework by analysing how existing laws and regulations apply to the operation of a shared ledger settlement system, including tokenised deposits.

Furthermore, the results of this phase are set to be published after this period, with UK Finance intending to host engagements and events to offer all stakeholders, including innovators, technology companies, and fintechs, with the capability to explore how they can engage with the project. .