We’re delighted – together with R3, the infrastructure platform building digital solutions for financial markets – to welcome the publication of the results of UK Finance’s UK Regulated Liability Network project.
The report follows work with eleven UK Finance members – Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered, Virgin Money, and Visa – on an experimentation phase. This is a new type of financial market infrastructure that can deliver new capabilities for payments and settlement, including tokenisation and programmability.
Quant and R3 were selected by the UK RLN, alongside DXC Technology and Coadjute, as technology partners in exploring a number of use cases and in particular the technology workstream which delivered a multi- issuer DLT-based Tokenisation Platform, a comprehensive API for interaction with all forms of money, and an Orchestration Layer. Implementation of the Orchestration Layer seamlessly connected the Tokenisation Platform to different ledgers and integrated with existing systems, such as Open Banking, Project Rosalind, and simulated RTGS.
Together with other participants, Quant and R3 reviewed and worked on various technical, legal and business case questions surrounding the development of an RLN and the main conclusions are:
- Such a platform, in collaboration with other important initiatives such as Open Banking, could deliver economic value and support innovation in the market.
- New functionality, such as programmable payments and locking/unlocking of funds, could be delivered across a range of use cases.
- It could provide new and innovative firms with a single, common point of access to enable them to interface with established institutions, and enhanced payment and settlement systems.
- The legal and regulatory framework of the UK is sufficiently flexible to support the implementation of an RLN.
R3 brought its ability to deliver complex pioneering projects for regulated markets whilst providing the critical distributed ledger capability, via Corda, its leading open permissioned DLT platform, powering the tokenisation of assets and currencies connecting global markets. Quant enabled programmability and interoperability across different forms of money by delivering the orchestration and API layer to the project with our Overledger platform.
“Every year, over £11 trillion worth of payments are processed in the UK, powering the economy. The success of the RLN experiment shows the potential of technology to transform the customer experience and deliver economic value and benefits for society,” said Jana Mackintosh, Managing Director of Payments, Innovation and Operational Resilience at UK Finance. “The Experimentation Phase demonstrated the power of industry collaboration to deliver a platform for innovation in the UK. The private sector wants to invest in the future of commercial bank money but needs a partnership with regulators to do so.”
“The RLN isn’t just about enhancing the efficiency of our current payment infrastructure; it’s about creating different forms of money that will transform the way value and assets are moved and managed. Programmability is at the heart of the transition to digital finance,” said Gilbert Verdian, Founder and CEO, Quant. “As the project has proven, programmability brings new functionality across payments and settlement that are inconceivable under the current system. Implementing programmability will be key to cementing the UK’s leadership position in digital finance and futureproofing our capital markets for the decades to come. As the digital economy evolves, we’re excited to continue working with other project participants in delivering further innovation across payments.”
“We are at a critical juncture in shaping a new generation of payments. The UK has long enjoyed a reputation of blazing the trail when it comes to payments innovation, but with international competition hotting up it, it’s vital that we don’t rest on our laurels,” added Martin Hargreaves, Chief Product Officer, Quant. “This latest phase of the RLN demonstrates the value that programmable payments can bring in levelling up UK banking ahead of other countries. The introduction of intelligent bank accounts with built-in personalised logic can give customers access to faster, more streamlined payments and equip UK banks with an important competitive differentiator. The RLN provides a unique opportunity to collaborate closely with peers in realising these benefits in a secure and regulated environment.”
Kate Karimson, R3 Chief Commercial Officer, said: “We’re proud to be a part of this pioneering effort where the UK finance industry has operated across retail, wholesale, technology and legal workstreams in a collaborative manner. R3 is committed to progressing financial markets and to enabling an open, trusted and advanced digital economy. The success of the RLN experimentation phase and the publication of a roadmap for the UK economy to harness the potential for the benefits of tokenisation demonstrates our advanced technology implementation capability.”
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