The UK’s Monument Bank with £7 billion in deposits, has announced it will tokenize retail customer deposits on the Midnight network, a privacy-focused public blockchain, making it the first UK bank to do so for retail rather than institutional clients.
The initiative, developed with the Midnight Foundation and London venture studio The Building Blocks, will represent customer deposits as digital tokens that correspond one-to-one with funds held at the bank. Deposits remain redeemable in pounds sterling and protected under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme.
The move is framed as the first step in a broader three phase rollout. The second phase would allow Monument’s mass-affluent customers to access tokenized real-world assets such as private equity and structured products through the bank’s app, without needing to manage digital assets themselves. The third phase would introduce Lombard lending, whereby customers can borrow against their investment portfolio without having to sell holdings, a facility that has traditionally been reserved for private banking clients.
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