Monument Bank delays retail tokenized deposits due to regulatory issues in the UK

According to CoinDesk, London challenger bank Monument Bank has postponed its £250 million (approximately $330 million) project to tokenize UK retail bank deposits for several months, as the bank has been unable to find a local crypto custodian that meets the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) standards and can handle zero-knowledge privacy proofs.

Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, stated that the bank originally planned to tokenize customer deposits on the privacy public chain Midnight, hoping to launch the world's first tokenized deposits two months ago, but it is now expected to take another two months, with a retail customer launch in November. To meet regulatory requirements, the bank expanded its search for custodial partners to overseas, ultimately finding a Canadian custodian approved by the FCA.

Midnight is a privacy-first Layer 1 blockchain project funded by Charles Hoskinson, which keeps customer information within the Monument system through zero-knowledge proofs while allowing the bank to prove compliance on-chain and provide audit records to regulators. Monument Bank announced the project in March this year, planning to offer tokenized private equity, structured products, and automated Lombard loans to "mass affluent" customers with investable assets ranging from £50,000 to £5 million.

Bhandari stated that customer deposits will continue to earn interest, fully backed by Monument, and can be exchanged at a 1:1 ratio for pounds, protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), with a limit of £120,000 per person or company.