Former BoE, Bundesbank officials join blockchain payments firm Fnality

Former Bank of England and Bundesbank officials have joined Fnality’s UK and European boards as the bank-backed blockchain payments company prepares to expand its central bank money settlement network beyond sterling.

Fnality said Thursday that former Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe will chair the board of its UK entity, while former Deutsche Bundesbank payments executive Jochen Metzger has been appointed to the supervisory board of Fnality Europe and is expected to become its chair.

Ron Berndsen, who previously served as head of oversight and head of market infrastructures policy at De Nederlandsche Bank, is joining the supervisory board of the Germany-based European business.

The appointments bring three former central bank officials into Fnality’s governance structure as banks and other financial institutions develop infrastructure for settling tokenized securities and moving digital forms of money across blockchain networks.

Fnality brings former central bankers into its payments network

Cunliffe previously served as the Bank of England’s deputy governor for financial stability, where his responsibilities included oversight of financial market infrastructure and payment systems.

Metzger served as director general for payments and settlement systems at Deutsche Bundesbank, while Berndsen previously worked on oversight and market infrastructure policy at the Dutch central bank.

Their appointments come as Fnality works to extend its wholesale payment infrastructure into additional currencies and jurisdictions.

The London-based company operates a blockchain-based wholesale payment system that allows participating financial institutions to settle obligations using funds backed by central bank money. Its sterling payment system launched in 2023 and is regulated by the Bank of England.

Fnality is now seeking regulatory approvals for dollar- and euro-denominated versions of the network.

“It is really important that we find a way to get central banks and central bank money at the heart of the new technologies that were pioneered in the crypto world,” Cunliffe said in an interview.

“Some of those technologies are coming to the mainstream world of finance because they offer better functionality and speed.”

Fnality was founded in 2019 and is backed by banks and financial market infrastructure companies including Goldman Sachs, UBS, Banco Santander, Bank of America and Citigroup.

The company raised $136 million in Series C funding in September 2025, with crypto.news previously reporting that WisdomTree, Bank of America, Citi, KBC Group, Temasek and Tradeweb led or participated in the round alongside existing investors including Goldman Sachs, Santander, UBS and Euroclear.

That financing took Fnality’s total funding since 2019 to more than $280 million. The company said at the time that the capital would support expansion of the Sterling Fnality Payment System into additional currencies, alongside liquidity management tools and connections with stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

Fnality had earlier raised $95 million in Series B funding in 2023 in a round led by Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas. Euroclear, DTCC, WisdomTree and Nomura were among the participants, while Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, ING, Lloyds Banking Group, State Street and UBS were among its existing backers.

Tokenized assets are creating demand for digital settlement

Banks are increasing work on tokenization, where conventional assets such as stocks and bonds are represented and transferred through blockchain-based infrastructure.

Moving securities onto digital networks creates a corresponding requirement for the cash side of transactions to operate on compatible systems. Fnality’s model uses central bank-backed money for wholesale settlement, allowing participating institutions to complete transactions involving digital assets without relying solely on stablecoins or commercial bank deposits.

Its live sterling system has been used for cases including real-time settlement of tokenized securities through delivery versus payment, foreign exchange transactions using payment versus payment and repo transactions.

Similar projects are developing across the banking sector.

Swift moved its blockchain ledger into deployment in July with 17 global banks preparing to test tokenized deposit payments for round-the-clock cross-border settlement. Participants included HSBC, Citi, BNP Paribas, UBS, ANZ, DBS and Standard Chartered.

The system coordinates tokenized deposits between banks while retaining existing compliance, risk and control processes. Tokenized deposits are digital representations of commercial bank deposits, meaning the underlying funds remain on the issuing bank’s balance sheet.

In August, HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first live interbank transaction through Swift’s blockchain ledger. The banks connected their separate tokenized deposit systems through the shared network, which matched and netted payment obligations before final settlement occurred through existing banking infrastructure.

Seventeen banks across six continents are participating in the wider Swift pilot.

Banks are testing several forms of digital money

Fnality is developing its central bank money model alongside other forms of blockchain-based cash being tested by banks, including tokenized deposits and stablecoins.

Stablecoins are generally issued by companies and backed by reserve assets, while tokenized deposits represent deposits held at commercial banks in digital form. Fnality instead provides wholesale settlement using money linked to central bank balances.

“Multiple models of digital money will co-exist,” Fnality Group CEO Michelle Neal said in an interview. “Our differentiation is that this is regulated wholesale settlement.”

Banks are developing infrastructure around more than one of those models.

Wells Fargo said in August that it planned to launch tokenized deposits for selected corporate and commercial clients, initially supporting U.S. dollar-to-British pound transactions. The bank plans to use blockchain infrastructure for 24-hour transfers, settlement and programmable payments before adding more clients, currencies and countries during 2027.

JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo are separately working through The Clearing House on a shared network that would allow corporate customers to move tokenized deposits around the clock, with a launch targeted for the first half of 2027.

The development of digital cash is taking place alongside efforts to put securities settlement on distributed ledgers.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group said in August that four MUFG companies would work with Digital Asset and Progmat on a blockchain settlement test for Japanese government bond repo transactions using Canton Network.

The project is designed to synchronize existing JGB book-entry records with blockchain infrastructure, while tokenized deposits or stablecoins are being considered for the cash side of settlement. Japan’s Financial Services Agency selected the project under its Payment Innovation Project pilot program in February.

Fnality’s sterling network uses a different settlement structure by placing central bank-backed money directly within its wholesale payments framework. With its UK system already operating, the company is working through the regulatory process required to extend that structure to dollar and euro payments.