The UK challenger bank is the first regulated British lender to pursue tokenized deposits for everyday customers, not just institutional whales
While the biggest names in traditional finance have spent the past two years building tokenization infrastructure for hedge funds and sovereign wealth managers, a UK challenger bank just pointed that same technology at a very different audience: regular people with savings accounts.
Monument Bank is moving to tokenize up to £250 million (roughly $330 million) in retail customer deposits on the Midnight blockchain, a privacy-focused network designed by Shielded Technologies. If the project launches as planned, it would mark the first time a UK-regulated bank has brought tokenized deposits to retail customers.
What Monument is actually building
The tokenized deposits will maintain a 1:1 peg with traditional savings balances, fully backed and redeemable in pounds sterling.
Monument’s target demographic is what the wealth management industry calls “mass-affluent” clients, people with investable assets between £50,000 and £5 million.
The Midnight blockchain uses zero-knowledge proofs to keep transaction details confidential between the bank and its customers while still allowing regulatory audits.
Monument currently manages roughly £7 billion in deposits across more than 100,000 customers. The £250 million earmarked for tokenization represents about 3.6% of that total.
Regulatory speed bumps and a Canadian detour
The original timeline called for a launch earlier in 2026, but the rollout has slipped to November. The holdup wasn’t technical. It was regulatory plumbing.
Monument founder Mintoo Bhandari pointed to difficulties finding a UK-based custodian that meets Financial Conduct Authority standards for handling advanced privacy technologies. The solution: Monument engaged an FCA-approved custodian based in Canada.
Why retail matters more than you think
Monument’s approach embeds tokenized deposits into a consumer banking app, meaning everyday customers don’t need to understand blockchain mechanics to benefit from them. Future phases of the project could include tokenized investment products and lending options, all managed through the app without requiring customers to directly handle digital assets.
What to watch from here
The choice of Midnight as the underlying network is worth tracking. Unlike Ethereum or Solana, Midnight is purpose-built for selective disclosure, a feature that regulated institutions care deeply about but that public chains have struggled to deliver natively. A successful deployment at Monument’s scale would give Midnight a powerful reference client.
