A ground-breaking initiative aiming to tokenize 250 million pounds, equivalent to $330 million, in British retail bank funds has missed its original internal launch target because Monument Bank faced institutional custody obstacles.
Mintoo Bhandari, founder of Monument Bank, shared with CoinDesk that the London-headquartered institution’s initiative to represent customer funds on the privacy-centric Midnight network has been delayed by a few months. This occurred because the firm could not secure a local digital asset custody provider capable of complying with rigorous Financial Conduct Authority requirements while processing zero-knowledge privacy proofs.
“I thought it would have been two months ago that we would have rolled out the first tokenized deposits in the world, but it’ll probably be two months more from now,” Bhandari noted during a discussion.
The digital-focused bank is pursuing an initiative that very few financial institutions have attempted: placing interest-generating retail funds onto a public distributed ledger, instead of restricting tokenization trials to wholesale clients or private frameworks, Bhandari explained. To overcome the compliance roadblock, Monument broadened its search for a custody collaborator across borders. Bhandari stated that the bank identified a regulated custodian in Canada. The chief executive added that he could not disclose the name of the Canadian custody firm at this time since both entities have not yet publicly disclosed their collaboration.
Midnight, Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/09/10/monument-bank-delays-retail-tokenized-deposits-cites-regulatory-issues-in-the-uk.
