We’re proud to announce that – together with R3, the enterprise distributed ledger technology and services firm – we have been selected to produce the technology prototype for the experimentation phase of the UK’s Regulated Liability Network, led by UK Finance and supported by EY.
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. A collaboration of several stakeholders within the financial services industry, the UK RLN explores the options for users to make payments, transact and settle liabilities in the increasingly digital marketplaces of the future.
Participants in the UK include Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered, Virgin Money and Visa. They are being supported by EY and Linklaters, and a technology team of R3, Quant, DXC Technology (DXC) and Coadjute.
R3 brings its ability to deliver complex pioneering projects for regulated markets whilst providing the critical shared ledger capability, via its leading tokenisation platform, Corda, and Digital Currency solution, part of the recently launched R3 Digital Markets product suite. Quant will be enabling programmability and interoperability across different forms of money by delivering the orchestration and API layer to the project with our Overledger platform.
The project will draw on the expertise of major global banks and institutions that plan to use the platform to test several retail and wholesale payments use cases. These span delivery vs payment, e-commerce, bond issuance, cards gateway integration, with the lead system integration partner DXC as well as Coadjute’s Home Purchasing Business Application, an innovative property market infrastructure and settlement model built on R3’s Corda.
R3’s and Quant’s technologies were built from the ground up for deployment in highly regulated use cases such as this. R3’s shared ledger and Quant’s Overledger API-based platform have been chosen for their capabilities in connecting diverse systems. This selection highlights their complementary and effective approaches to interoperability and integration.
“R3’s shared ledger technology is a great asset to this experimentation phase of work,” said Jana Mackintosh, Managing Director, Payment Innovation and Resilience at UK Finance. “This project is being run to test hypotheses about the envisaged benefits of a UK RLN as a platform-for-innovation, and will be integral to futureproofing and progressing the UK’s financial infrastructure. Quant’s experience developing connectivity and smart contracts will prove invaluable to the UK RLN proof-of-concept as we look to simulate the integration of participants’ existing systems and explore payments programmability that enhances use cases and business flows.”
“We live in a digital age, in which people and companies expect digital finance to operate globally at speed, with better security and at scale – but our legacy payments and financial infrastructure has not kept up. As the UK seeks a leadership position in financial markets, projects like the RLN highlight the central role that shared ledgers will play in this transition and offer a model we can extend to other markets,” said Gilbert Verdian, our Founder and CEO. “We’re delighted to be a key part of this important initiative which so closely aligns with our company vision: an empowered, interconnected world.”
“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,” said R3 Chief Commercial Officer Kate Karimson. “Being selected to lead and deliver the technology stream for the Experimentation Phase underpinning the UK RLN is a huge milestone for R3, and a testament to our technology when it comes to powering the digitalisation of real-world assets and currencies in complex and highly regulated industries. In the future, the RLN could provide a digital infrastructure that firms across the ecosystem can connect into and innovate further. We’re excited to be part of a truly pioneering initiative that will hopefully inform other future innovations.”
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