The House of Lords returns to report stage of the Financial Services and Markets Bill today, the second sitting after Monday 7 September, with the government's amendment to give the Bank of England a secondary payments innovation objective still on the paper. HM Treasury announced the plan on 27 August. Financial stability remains the primary duty. The Bank would not have to back a new payment system, including one that uses digital settlement assets such as stablecoins, if doing so threatened that mandate. It would report annually to Parliament on progress. City Minister Lucy Rigby has said tokenisation and distributed ledger technology can change wholesale markets. That is a speech. Today's sitting is the statute. Peers can accept, rewrite, or park the wording. A secondary objective is not a licence. It is a reporting duty bolted onto the Bank's existing role over systemic payment systems, extending an innovation approach already used for central counterparties and central securities depositories.
The calendar behind the debate is tighter than the language. The FCA's cryptoasset application window opens at 9:00 a.m. on 30 September and closes at 11:59 p.m. on 28 February 2027, a direction given under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026. Firms that want the savings provisions while the full regime starts on 25 October 2027 need to file inside that window. The same 30 September date is the comment deadline on joint Bank and FCA rules for systemic stablecoin issuers recognised by the Treasury. Two clocks, one Tuesday. An issuer that misses the form is not saved by a Lords speech about innovation.
What 30 September actually opens
The application form goes live on the FCA's online system that morning. Already-authorised FSMA firms file a variation of permission. Everyone else files a new application. Poor-quality packs can be rejected, delayed, or refused. Firms that do not apply, or that apply and fail, must run off cryptoasset activity when the regime commences. The watchdog has already said it cannot get your coins back and will not contact you to say it is holding them. That sentence will be impersonated the week the gateway opens. Anyone who emails a "pre-authorisation refund" with a bitcoin invoice is running the second fraud. See why fake FCA recovery emails rise as the gateway nears.
Washington votes six days after the Lords sit
The U.S. Senate holds cloture on the motion to proceed to the CLARITY Act at 2:15 p.m. Eastern on 15 September. Sixty votes open debate. They do not pass H.R. 3633. The FOMC decision is the next day. Britain's process is slower and more boring, which is the point. A Bank innovation mandate, an FCA gateway, and a 2027 commencement date are the UK market-structure path. Treating today's Lords sitting as a binary for bitcoin is a category error. Treating 30 September as the last date a UK crypto firm can file without gambling on the run-off is closer to how the handbook actually works.