Polygon Enters Bank Of England Digital Pound Experiment

Polygon Labs has been selected by the Bank of England to participate in Phase 2 of its Digital Pound Lab, joining a consortium with NOBO Finance and business-data provider Dun & Bradstreet. The consortium will test how stablecoins and a potential digital pound could interoperate to improve cross-border trade finance.

Two Workstreams, One Goal

The consortium is running two connected projects inside the central bank's experimental programme. The first creates a portable SME Bankable Profile that small businesses can carry between lenders instead of re-submitting the same paperwork each time. Dun & Bradstreet handles risk data for this project while Polygon Labs provides the smart contracts. The goal is to give smaller firms a reusable financial identity that works across different lenders and markets.

A second workstream will test invoice factoring where exporters receive stablecoin advances while UK importers complete final settlement in digital pounds. Polygon's Open Money Stack will manage stablecoin transactions on the settlement leg, while the digital pound side runs on the Bank's simulated test rails.

For small businesses that export and import goods, trade finance remains slow and costly due to verification being split across multiple parties, with settlement taking days. Large companies can afford this delay through treasury operations, but smaller firms face a cash squeeze between shipping goods and receiving payment. The experiment is designed to assess whether programmable digital money can close that gap.

No Real Money, No Commitment to Launch

The Lab exists to test ideas and new technology in a simulated environment: no real customers, no real money, and no formal regulatory review attached to what gets tested inside it. The experiments are intended to inform the Bank of England and the Treasury's assessment of how different forms of digital money can interoperate.

No real money or customers are involved, and the bank stresses it has not decided to issue a digital pound. Nevertheless, the Digital Pound Lab enables organisations to evaluate technical architectures ahead of any regulatory determination.

Sources:
Polygon Labs official blog: Phase 2 of the Bank of England's Digital Pound Lab
CoinDesk: Bank of England expands digital pound pilot with Polygon and stablecoins
Crypto Briefing: Bank of England taps NOBO, Polygon Labs and Dun & Bradstreet for Digital Pound Lab