Britain Orders Its Central Bank To Chase Payments Innovation, Not Just Stability
City minister Lucy Rigby and Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden confirmed the mandate August 27, covering stablecoins, tokenisation and distributed-ledger settlement.
- Financial stability remains the Bank's primary duty; the innovation objective is explicitly subordinate to it.
- Financial Services and Markets Bill amendments face Lords debate on September 7 and 9.
- Parliament requires annual reporting on how the Bank exercises this new power.
Why it matters: Regulators given a duty to promote an industry tend, over time, to answer to it instead of watching it.