Bank of England Taps Polygon for Stablecoin, Digital Pound Trade Tests

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Polygon Labs has joined a consortium with NOBO Finance and Dun & Bradstreet in Phase 2 of the Bank of England’s Digital Pound Lab, testing whether a stablecoin and a digital pound can settle the same cross-border payment in a single flow.

The Polygon announced the participation on August 11, In the test, an exporter is paid in stablecoins while an importer settles in a digital pound, with both legs moving through one orchestration layer instead of two separate settlement processes.

Polygon is contributing that layer through its Open Money Stack, the smart contract infrastructure it launched on January 8, 2026 to handle cross-border stablecoin payments. The digital pound leg settles on the Bank’s own simulated test rails.

The Digital Pound Lab does not involve real customers or real money, and the Bank has said policy choices participants. Twelve organizations are taking part in Phase 2 in total.

Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron said the test reflects a broader interoperability problem: “For digital money to actually move the world’s trade, its different forms have to work together, public and private, central bank money and stablecoins.”

The pivot behind the pilot

The announcement lands just over seven months after Polygon Labs unveiled the Open Money Stack as the foundation of a shift toward payments infrastructure. Polygon Labs also cut staff twice in 2026 as part of that broader shift, and was reportedly seeking up to $100 million to fund that specific business this year.

• Jan. 8, 2026 – Open Money Stack launches: Polygon introduces the infrastructure as part of its push into stablecoin and cross-border payments.
• Jan. 2026 – Coinme and Sequence acquisitions: Polygon announces deals worth more than $250 million as it expands its payments infrastructure.
• Jan. 2026 – Workforce cuts: Polygon cuts roughly 60 positions amid restructuring following the acquisitions.
• April 2026 – Reported $100 million funding target: Reports say Polygon is seeking up to $100 million for its stablecoin-payments business.
• July 16, 2026 – Second round of cuts: Polygon announces another round of workforce reductions as it continues integrating Coinme and reshaping its business around payments.
• Aug. 11, 2026 – Bank of England pilot: Polygon announces its participation in Phase 2 of the Digital Pound Lab with NOBO Finance and Dun & Bradstreet.

The same product now doing double duty as the company’s growth bet is the one running the stablecoin leg of a Bank of England pilot.

NOBO’s second run at a portable credit identity

Within the consortium, NOBO Finance is leading a separate workstream called the SME Bankable Profile, a portable credit identity meant to let a small business carry its verified financial standing between lenders. Dun & Bradstreet supplies the underlying business identity and credit data, and Polygon provides the onchain infrastructure that lets the profile move with a payment.

NOBO Finance CEO Ayo Ojerinola said the Lab gives the company “a safe environment to test our innovations,” and Dun & Bradstreet’s Sara de la Torre said smoother trade finance for small businesses depends on trust between the parties involved.

The company ran an earlier version of the Bankable Profile concept in Phase 1 of the same Lab, published in March 2026, working then with a different infrastructure partner, Applied Blockchain, before bringing in Polygon for Phase 2.

The Bank of England has said it will share what it learns once Phase 2 concludes. For Polygon, the pilot provides a live, if simulated, test of the same settlement infrastructure the company is now building its payments strategy around.

On June 22, 2026, the Bank of England dropped proposed £20,000 individual and £10 million business holding limits for systemic stablecoins, replacing them with a temporary £40 billion issuance cap per stablecoin. The shift allows unrestricted transaction sizes while limiting the potential impact on bank credit provision.