The UK government plans to give the Bank of England a new statutory job: support innovation in payment systems, stablecoins, and other digital money. The 27 August HM Treasury release makes clear that financial stability stays first. The new duty would sit underneath it, and the Bank would report to Parliament each year on how it is backing payments innovation. That is a legal instruction, not a press-release slogan, and it is the first time Threadneedle Street would be required to help digital settlement assets develop inside its own perimeter.
The change would travel as amendments to the Financial Services and Markets Bill, next due in the House of Lords on 7 and 9 September. Peers can accept, reject, or rewrite the wording. Until that text is final, the scope of which payment systems fall inside the objective is still open. Sterling stablecoins still hold near-zero global share, so the practical effect is about the pipeline, not the stock.
What the Bank has already shifted
In June the Bank dropped proposed temporary limits on how much individuals and businesses could hold. It replaced them with a temporary £40 billion issuance guardrail for each systemic stablecoin, and raised the share of backing assets that issuers may hold in short-term UK government debt from 60% to 70%, with the rest in central bank deposits. The Bank of England's own Code of Practice consultation for systemic issuers closes on 22 September. Those dates will move more money than the headline mandate.
The FCA clock is tighter
Firms can apply for FCA cryptoasset authorisation from 30 September 2026 through 28 February 2027. The mandatory regime is scheduled for 25 October 2027. Revolut is already inside the FCA stablecoin sandbox. UK banks testing tokenized deposits, and names in the Digital Securities Sandbox, are the closest to using the new clarity. See our earlier note on the first full licences under the gateway. The United States is writing GENIUS Act rules on a parallel track; the UK move narrows the gap with that statute and with EU MiCA, without matching either one overnight.