UK Finance, an association of over 300 institutions providing banking, intermediation, and payment services, has published a report disclosing the results found during the Regulated Liability Network’s (RLN) experimentation phase. The project, which combines central bank money, commercial bank money, and electronic money in the same shared ledger, seeks to modernize the current financial infrastructure, including tokenized assets.
Quant, R3, DXC Technology, and Coadjute were selected to test the project’s feasibility by experimenting with different use cases that leveraged a unified Application programming interface (API) to interact with different ledgers. Financial Industry powerhouses like Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, Natwest, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered, Virgin Money, and Visa, also participated.
As a result of this experimentation, the project concluded that when integrated with other money initiatives, the platform can deliver economic value and grow innovation in financial markets. In the same way, it can unlock new functionalities by introducing programmable payments, locking, and unlocking funds depending on the use case.
The report also states that a common interface point would benefit firms by abstracting from the complexity of today’s financial world, allowing them to connect with other institutions through a single network. Finally, the report assesses that UK regulation is flexible enough to support the implementation of the RLN.
UK Finance’s Managing Director of Payments, Innovation, and Operational Resilience Jana Mackintosh emphasized the relevance of the success of these tests.
She stated:
The success of the RLN experiment shows the potential of technology to transform the customer experience and deliver economic value and benefits for society. The private sector wants to invest in the future of commercial bank money but needs a partnership with regulators to do so.