BoE Taps NOBO, Dun & Bradstreet, Polygon Labs in Digital Pound Lab Expansion

The Bank of England's Digital Pound Lab has welcomed three new participants to its second phase: NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet, and Polygon Labs. This group will test how stablecoins and a potential digital pound could interoperate to improve cross-border trade finance.

The Digital Pound Lab is an experimental platform that allows financial and technology companies to prototype products and payment use cases for the UK's proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC). Participants can experiment with features such as digital pound wallets, online and in-store payments, and conditional payments.

Phase 2 of the project aims to tackle the financing gap created by slow settlement and limited credit access for cross-border SMEs. By exploring portable financial identities and faster digital settlement, the consortium hopes to make cross-border SME financing more efficient.

The two main workstreams will focus on creating a reusable credit outcome using consented wallet activity, open finance data, and commercial intelligence (led by NOBO with Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs), and exploring eBL-backed invoice factoring with multi-rail settlement (using Polygon Labs' Open Money Stack).