The Bank of England has chosen NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs to take part in the second phase of its Digital Pound Lab. The consortium will examine how stablecoins and a possible digital pound could work together to support cross-border trade finance for small and medium-sized enterprises.

The Digital Pound Lab is an experimental platform that lets financial and technology firms prototype products and payment use cases for a future digital pound, the United Kingdom’s proposed central bank digital currency. Participants can test digital pound wallets, conditional payments, authentication tools and interoperability between blockchain systems and a central demonstration ledger. The programme uses no real customers or money and does not signal a decision by the central bank to issue a digital pound.

Building on Earlier Escrow Tests

NOBO Finance, a UK fintech focused on digital trade finance infrastructure, completed Phase 1 by demonstrating conditional business-to-business escrow payments designed for trade finance. Phase 2 expands that work by adding Dun & Bradstreet’s commercial intelligence and Polygon Labs’ blockchain capabilities.

The initiative targets persistent challenges for smaller companies engaged in international trade. Slow settlement times can lock up working capital between shipment and payment, while manual verification and fragmented data often make it harder for SMEs to prove creditworthiness and secure financing.

Phase 2 will assess whether portable, verifiable financial identities and faster digital settlement can improve efficiency in cross-border SME financing.

Two Parallel Workstreams

The consortium plans two connected experiments. The first, an SME Bankable Profile led by NOBO with support from Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs, will combine consented wallet activity, open finance data and commercial intelligence to generate a reusable credit outcome.

Dun & Bradstreet will supply business and risk data. Polygon Labs will provide smart-contract infrastructure for verifiable records, consent management and the lifecycle of financing deals. The aim is a portable financial identity that an SME can present to different lenders and markets without repeating full assessments.

The second workstream will explore electronic bill of lading-backed invoice factoring with multi-rail settlement. Under the tested model, exporters would receive financing advances through a stablecoin rail while UK importers complete final settlement in digital pounds.

Polygon Labs will support the stablecoin portion via its Open Money Stack, a common integration layer for stablecoin payments across applications and financial institutions.

Interoperability Focus

The two experiments will examine how stablecoins, potential digital-pound payments and trusted business data can operate together. The project does not seek to replace stablecoins. Instead it explores whether both forms of digital money can coexist within the same trade finance flow while helping SMEs demonstrate creditworthiness and gain access to faster settlement.

Sara de la Torre, head of financial services at Dun & Bradstreet, noted that reliable identity and risk information remains important when institutions assess smaller companies involved in international trade. The resulting profile is intended to stay under the SME’s control and travel with the business when it seeks financing from different providers.

The Digital Pound Lab forms part of the Bank of England’s broader research into how a possible retail central bank digital currency could function alongside existing and emerging payment systems. The central bank has previously indicated that the United Kingdom’s future retail payment infrastructure could accommodate several forms of digital money, including tokenised bank deposits, regulated stablecoins and a potential digital pound.