Bank of England moves toward 24/7 settlement — and tokenized finance is built into the blueprint!

The Bank of England launched a formal consultation on May 18 to extend the operating hours of RTGS and CHAPS — the UK's core high-value settlement infrastructure — toward near-continuous availability, with a phased roadmap running to 2031. The proposals include a weekend settlement day, extended daily windows, and a live synchronization service targeted for 2028 that would allow tokenized assets to settle alongside cash legs on a distributed ledger, closing the counterparty risk gap at the central bank level.

The package is coordinated across the BoE, FCA, and PRA. The FCA and BoE are already working with 16 firms in the Digital Securities Sandbox — including a live pilot of HM Treasury's digital gilt instrument, DIGIT — and the PRA has signaled a proportionate, lighter-touch approach to wholesale stablecoin issuance by banks.