Bank of England publishes an omnibus accounts policy to enable innovative payment systems

London, 19 April 2021: Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer made an announcement as part of UK FinTech Week 2021, welcoming the Bank of England’s new omnibus account model, devised to allow new and innovative financial market infrastructures to access central bank settlement money. Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Bank of England also issued a press release on the publication of this policy. Fnality International, a private sector initiative supported by 15 major financial institutions, is delighted to announce that it has already made an application and notes this major milestone on its journey to launch a network of innovative DLT based Fnality Payment Systems, together comprising Fnality Global Payments.

Fnality started as the Utility Settlement Coin (USC) project in 2016. It is now in its fourth phase of launching an initial live payment system – the first Fnality Payment System – after establishing its design goals, confirming feasibility through R&D, and creating an investable proposition. Since the initiative’s initial phase, the goal has been to drive the global payments paradigm shift necessary to support a world of tokenised asset settlement. This has been collaboratively driven by the Fnality team and the investor institutions, encompassing cutting edge technology combined with innovative legal and policy thinking. The result is a new design of distributed financial market infrastructure (dFMI) offering superior efficiency and market resilience.

Fnality sees this latest step by the Bank of England as an acknowledgement of the market need to respond to evolving technology, for greater efficiency, and to support growing industry adoption of tokenised cash and assets. Fnality expects to fully comply with the BoE policy in supporting extensive use cases in peer-to-peer settlement with a new Sterling Fnality Payment System, 100% backed by fiat currency funds held with the central bank.

Rhomaios Ram, Fnality CEO: “We are delighted that the Bank of England has published a formal policy statement outlining the omnibus account eligibility criteria for innovative payment systems like Fnality. This policy is a key enabler in delivering game changing use cases on our new payment system.”

Hyder Jaffrey, MD – Head of Principal Investments, UBS Investment Bank: “Having been involved from the start of the Fnality journey, it’s great to see the publication of this policy. It highlights the progressive and forward thinking approach taken by the Bank of England to support innovation in global payments. This approach will enable us to develop new settlement models, bringing significant market benefits to all stakeholders.”

John Whelan, MD – Digital Investment Bank & Innovation, Banco Santander: “It is exciting to see this development from the Bank of England supporting the opportunity to use tokenised cash assets on next generation payment systems, enabling on-chain wholesale exchange of value.”

Andrea Melville, MD, Commercialisation & Propositions, Lloyds Banking Group: “As a British bank, we are pleased to see that the Bank of England is providing the markets with opportunities to deliver a new payment system supported by the latest technologies. This is an important milestone in the evolution of the financial services industry.”

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Media contact: The Realization Group for Fnality International

Melanie Budden

Melanie.budden@therealizationgroup.com

+44 7974 937970

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About Fnality

Fnality International (Fnality) is the commercial realisation of a four-year research and development project, previously known as the USC project, that has focused on understanding how market infrastructure needs to evolve to meet the challenge of tokenised markets. Fnality International was founded to create a network of decentralised Financial Market Infrastructures (dFMIs) to deliver payment systems for tomorrow’s wholesale banking markets.

Fnality is building regulated payment systems to support the growing industry adoption of tokenised assets and marketplaces. The Fnality Global Payments solution will enable new post-trade processes which will lead to significant risk and cost reductions, remove many inefficiencies of fragmented liquidity, as well as enabling new ways of meeting financial obligations.

Fnality was set up by a consortium of financial institutions. The founding shareholders comprise: Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, ING, KBC Group, Lloyds Banking Group, Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank, Nasdaq, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, State Street Corporation, and UBS.

For more information please visit fnality.org or follow us on Twitter @fnality or LinkedIn