Monument Bank will tokenize up to £250 million of retail deposits on the Midnight blockchain, using zero‑knowledge proofs to offer interest‑bearing, fully backed savings without exposing customers to crypto interfaces.
Monument Bank, a U.K. challenger bank, announced plans to tokenize up to £250 million (about $335 million) of retail customer deposits on the public‑blockchain platform Midnight. The deposits will remain interest‑bearing, fully backed by the bank, and redeemable one‑for‑one in pounds sterling, with Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection up to the scheme’s limits. The bank says the experience will resemble a conventional sterling deposit, and customers will not need to understand or interact with cryptocurrency.
The initiative relies on zero‑knowledge proofs to verify transaction conditions without publishing underlying personal data on‑chain, addressing privacy and regulatory concerns. Monument’s founder Mintoo Bhandari noted that existing tokenized‑money projects at large institutions such as JPMorgan and Citi are confined to institutional clients and permissioned networks, leaving a gap for regular consumers.
Monument intends to use the tokenized deposits as a gateway to offer retail clients fractional private‑equity, tokenized structured products and Lombard lending within a regulated banking app, subject to appropriate permissions. If successful, the bank plans to license the underlying infrastructure to other banks through a vehicle called Monument Technology.
The reporting does not detail regulatory approval timelines, the technical readiness of Midnight’s zero‑knowledge implementation, or how the tokenized deposits will integrate with existing banking liquidity management, leaving those outcomes uncertain.