Monument Bank to tokenize £250m in retail deposits on Midnight

Monument Bank, the U.K. challenger lender with a roughly $2.4 billion balance sheet, announced plans to tokenize up to £250 million ($335 million) of retail customer deposits on the Midnight blockchain, according to CoinDesk. The initiative aims to offer standard banking app based lending and tokenized investments, eliminating the need for direct cryptocurrency usage.

Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that current blockchain initiatives have failed to reach regular savers. "Most of the coins that have been minted and are all internal projects used for money transfer," Bhandari said. "Is that really moving the needle for the whole bank and for the consumer? Not yet."

The bank will employ zero-knowledge proofs to safeguard customer data while complying with regulatory standards. These tokenized products will be exchangeable for an equivalent amount of pounds sterling and will hold Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection, subject to the scheme's established caps. Bhandari noted that the user interface would mirror a standard sterling deposit, allowing for immediate withdrawal.

JPMorgan channels over $3 trillion through its internal Kinexys blockchain platform, while Citi handles billions in daily cross-border payments via tokenized services. These systems, however, are confined to institutional customers and permissioned networks. Monument contends its retail-oriented strategy fills a void left by these Wall Street giants, as existing internal infrastructure and broad consumer access cannot be simultaneously achieved without a dedicated retail pathway.