Bank of England taps Polygon for Phase 2 of digital pound trials

The Bank of England has selected Polygon Labs, NOBO Finance, and business-data provider Dun & Bradstreet to run the next round of its Digital Pound Lab.

These companies are testing how a central bank digital pound and private stablecoins could settle different parts of the same cross-border trade deal.

What problem is the Bank of England trying to solve?

For small businesses that export and import goods, trade finance remains slow and costly due to the fact that verification is split across multiple parties, and settlement can take days. Large companies can afford this delay through treasury operations, but smaller firms face a cash squeeze between shipping goods and receiving payment.

The Bank of England is attempting to fix this with different forms of digital money working together.

A consortium that consists of Polygon Labs, NOBO Finance, and Dun&Bradstreet, all selected by the Bank, is building two connected projects inside the central bank’s experimental program.

The first creates a profile that SMEs can carry between lenders instead of re-submitting the same paperwork each time called the SME Bankable Profile.

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