For the past few years, the financial industry has been obsessed with the settlement layer. We watched as Visa settled $20B in stablecoins annually and eventually became a founding validator on Circle’s Arc L1. We saw SoFi launch the first bank-issued stablecoin on Mastercard, signaling that traditional finance was ready to move value at the speed of code. These were the heavy-duty pipes being laid in the dark.
Then came the distribution layer. This was the era of Circle and Binance, where the latter committed $100M in equity and a five-year deal to ensure that digital dollars could actually reach the people and platforms that needed them. It was about liquidity, access, and making sure the rails were not just functional, but ubiquitous.
This infrastructure now supports a $307B stablecoin supply, serving as the backbone for critical capital flows. As this market matures, we are witnessing a two-track race between tokenized deposits and payment stablecoins to capture institutional money.
On September 24, 2026, the UK executed the next step in that race. Seven of the country’s largest banks — Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays, HSBC, and three others — completed the world’s first interbank blockchain transactions using tokenized deposits. The transactions included remortgage completions and marketplace peer-to-peer payments, all cleared and settled on Quant’s Overledger platform with support from EY and Linklaters.
Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has been explicit about where the central bank stands. In a July 2025 interview with The Times, Bailey said he “could not understand their need” for stablecoins and “believed tokenisation offered more value.” The Bank’s practical stance — favoring tokenized deposits over stablecoins for wholesale settlement — is a major sovereign signal that validates the institutional track thesis Forkast has documented all week.
Quant: The Transatlantic Bridge
The significance extends beyond the UK. The same platform that powered the UK’s interbank transactions was selected by The Clearing House for its US On-Chain Money Initiative, which will bring tokenized deposits to 25 of the largest US banks, including Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, HSBC, BNY Mellon, PNC, US Bank, and Truist. The US network is targeting H1 2027 for launch, aligned with the GENIUS Act enforcement cliff of January 18, 2027.
Quant’s role as the technology provider for both the UK and US programs positions it as the transatlantic bridge for institutional tokenized money. The Clearing House CEO David Watson stated: “The Clearing House is proud to help banks scale on-chain money movement by extending the safety, resiliency, and settlement certainty of regulated bank payment rails.”
The Multi-Money System
The UK program — formally the Grantham Business Tokenized Deposits (GBTD) initiative — connected seven banks to the Bank of England’s RTGS, Faster Payments, and Open Banking infrastructure. The banks settled real remortgage transactions and marketplace P2P payments using tokenized deposits that function as commercial bank money, not as a separate asset class.
Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby stated: “These live transactions show how tokenized deposits can deliver practical, real-world benefits, contingent payments that give customers greater control over their money.” The emphasis on “contingent payments” points to programmability — the ability to attach conditions to money movement that traditional rails cannot support.
The next steps are already mapped. Three digital bonds are planned for early 2027, settled with tokenized deposits. A dedicated company is being formed to govern the program. And a governance framework is being established to manage the transition from pilot to production.
The Edge Case
The regulatory neutrality position deserves scrutiny. The Bank of England has publicly backed tokenized deposits while maintaining technical neutrality between deposit tokens and stablecoins. Bailey’s private preference — deposits over stablecoins — was expressed in a newspaper interview, not in a formal regulatory document. The practical outcome, however, is clear: the UK’s largest banks are building on deposit tokens, not on stablecoins.
The US picture is more fragmented. The GENIUS Act creates a federal framework for payment stablecoins, but the regulatory perimeter for tokenized deposits remains uncertain. The Clearing House’s H1 2027 timeline aligns with the GENIUS Act enforcement cliff, suggesting that the institutional infrastructure will be in place before the stablecoin regulatory framework is fully operational.
For builders and investors, the signal is clear: the institutional settlement layer is forming, and it is forming on tokenized deposits, not stablecoins. The UK just proved the concept works at interbank scale. The US will test whether it works across 25 banks and $2 trillion in daily payment volume. Quant’s platform is the bridge between the two experiments.