STORY
The Government plans to give the Bank of England a new responsibility to support innovation in payment systems and emerging forms of digital money. The secondary objective will require the Bank to encourage technological development while retaining financial stability as its primary consideration.
The reforms will extend the Bank’s existing innovation responsibilities to systemic payment systems, including those using digital settlement assets such as stablecoins. The Government said developments including tokenisation and distributed ledger technology could transform financial markets, but stressed that the Bank would not be required to support innovations which threatened financial stability.
The Bank will report annually to Parliament on its progress against the new objective. Ministers expect to introduce the change through amendments to the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which is due to be debated in the House of Lords on 7 and 9 September. City Minister Lucy Rigby said the measure would help the UK remain a global leader in financial services.