A seven-member UK banking initiative that includes Barclays and HSBC UK has completed what trade body UK Finance called “the first live customer transactions using tokenised sterling deposits,” in an announcement on Thursday.

The payments ran through the Great British Tokenised Deposit (GBTD) initiative, which UK Finance convened. Its other members are Lloyds Banking Group, Monzo, Nationwide, NatWest and Santander. UK Finance describes tokenized deposits as digital versions of ordinary commercial bank money that keep the regulatory protections of a conventional deposit.

Money That Waits for a Condition

The first batch covered two remortgage completions and one marketplace purchase. In the remortgages, the money sat locked until each deal completed, then moved automatically. UK Finance said the setup can also let borrowers keep earning interest on that money until the deal closes. In the marketplace sale, a buyer paying a private seller had the money locked in their own account until the item changed hands.

“These transactions are real money moving on UK infrastructure, not an experiment,” said Gilbert Verdian, founder and CEO of Quant, in a statement UK Finance published with the results. Quant built the shared GBTD platform. Verdian said conditional payments can solve problems ranging from “failed completions” to “authorised push payment fraud.”

Lucy Rigby, economic secretary to the Treasury, called the transactions “a critical milestone for payments innovation in the UK.”

Digital Assets Are Next

UK Finance launched the live pilot phase in September 2025 with six banks, and Monzo joined as the seventh participant in January. The project has also been accepted into the Bank of England’s Synchronisation Lab, which explores atomic settlement in central bank money.

Some of the same banks are working on similar rails elsewhere. In July, 17 banks, including HSBC and Lloyds, lined up to pilot live tokenized deposit payments on a blockchain-based ledger Swift opened.

UK Finance said it expects further pilots over the next few months to test settling digital assets with tokenized customer money. Banks in the project plan to issue digital debt instruments whose coupons are paid in tokenized deposits.

Related Listen: Robinhood’s Tokenized AMC Shares Spark a Fight Over What Stock Tokens Really Are