UK-based Monument Bank is starting to tokenize retail deposits on a public blockchain. The Midnight network is becoming the foundation for a new type of banking service. The initial amount of tokenized deposits exceeds $330 million. The bank, regulated by the Bank of England and holding around £7 billion (approximately $9.35 billion) in deposits, will become the first in the UK to tokenize customers’ retail deposits on a public blockchain — on the Midnight network.
The first phase involves tokenizing deposits of up to £250 million (nearly $334 million). This initiative gives the bank’s customers — a so-called mass affluent audience — the ability to hold deposits in the form of digital tokens, while retaining all standard banking guarantees, including protection under the FSCS (Financial Services Compensation Scheme).
The program will be implemented in three stages:
Stage One — Tokenization of Monument clients’ deposits on the Midnight network. Each token corresponds to one pound sterling held in a bank account. Deposits remain protected by regulators and can be redeemed for pounds.
Stage Two — Access to tokenized real-world products: private investment funds, commodity funds, and structured products, which were previously available only to ultra-high-net-worth clients and institutional investors. All of this will be accessible directly through the Monument app, without the need to purchase or hold crypto assets.
Stage Three — Launch of collateralized lending, allowing clients to borrow against their investments without selling them. Previously, this service was available only to private banking clients.
According to Boston Consulting Group estimates, the volume of tokenized financial assets could reach $4 trillion–$16 trillion by 2030. Meanwhile, in Q4 2025, the BNB Chain ecosystem reached $2 billion, becoming the second largest in the world by volume of tokenized assets.
A key feature of the solution is the use of the confidential Midnight blockchain: transaction data is accessible only to the bank and its clients. This allows the benefits of a public blockchain to be combined with the requirements of a regulated financial environment. Fahmi Syed, President of the Midnight Foundation, commented on the launch: “Midnight provides a programmable privacy infrastructure that allows financial institutions to represent assets on public networks while protecting transaction data and confidential financial information.”
It is worth noting that deposit tokenization is gaining popularity worldwide: in 2024, UK Finance, together with Barclays, HSBC, Citigroup, Mastercard, NatWest, and Nationwide, launched a pilot project for deposit tokenization, and in 2026, ZKsync and BitGo created such infrastructure for banks based on the Prividium platform.
