BoE Taps Consortium for Digital Pound Lab Phase 2
The Bank of England has selected NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet, and Polygon Labs to participate in the second phase of its Digital Pound Lab. This experimental platform allows financial and technology companies to prototype products and payment use cases for a potential digital pound, the UK's proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The consortium will test how stablecoins and a digital pound can interoperate to improve cross-border trade finance, tackling the financing gap created by slow settlement and limited credit access for SMEs. Manual verification and fragmented financial data make it difficult for smaller businesses to prove their creditworthiness.
Phase 2 of the Digital Pound Lab will explore whether portable, verifiable financial identities and faster digital settlement can make cross-border SME financing more efficient. The consortium will develop two main workstreams: an SME Bankable Profile, led by NOBO with Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs, and eBL-backed invoice factoring with multi-rail settlement.