Monument Bank moves savings to Midnight

A new initiative from a London lender aims to bring tokenized deposits into mainstream savings while staying fully inside the U.K. regulatory perimeter.

Monument Bank moves retail savings onto public blockchain

Monument Bank, a U.K. challenger, said it plans to move up to 250 million pounds ($335 million) of retail customer deposits onto the Midnight network, a public blockchain. The bank described this as the first time a U.K.-regulated bank will place retail money as tokenized balances on a public chain.

The lender stressed that the deposits will remain interest-bearing, fully backed on its balance sheet and redeemable one-for-one in pounds sterling. Moreover, the cash will continue to be covered by the U.K. Financial Services Compensation Scheme, keeping the same statutory protection familiar to U.K. savers.

From experiments to regulated retail tokenisation

The move highlights a broader shift to bring tokenized financial products into regulated banking channels. While institutions in the U.K. and abroad have run pilots with token models, most projects so far have focused on wholesale use cases or permissioned, closed networks rather than public chains.

Monument is targeting mass affluent customers rather than institutions, positioning the program for clients with investable assets between 50,000 pounds and 5 million pounds. However, the bank is framing this as an early step that could later expand beyond the initial wealth bracket as technology and demand evolve.

How the Midnight integration will work

According to Monument, which reports more than 100,000 customers and around 7 billion pounds in deposits, the first phase will simply mirror savings balances on the Midnight network blockchain. In practice, that means balances held in traditional accounts will have equivalent representations on Midnight’s privacy-focused public ledger.

In a later phase, the bank plans to extend this architecture beyond savings. Moreover, Monument aims to introduce tokenized investment products, including private market funds and commodity funds, and then allow lending against those on-chain holdings directly inside the Monument mobile app.

Privacy design and infrastructure partners

The underlying blockchain infrastructure is being provided by Midnight Foundation, which was developed by Shielded Technologies, a company linked to Cardano creator Input Output. That said, Monument emphasized that the privacy design is tailored for regulated banking obligations.

The system is built so that transaction data on Midnight remains visible only to Monument and its customers, even though it runs on a public chain. However, it is also intended to sit within existing U.K. banking protections, compliance requirements and reporting obligations, aligning on-chain activity with long-standing regulatory standards.

Positioning within the tokenization landscape

Monument’s strategy touches on a live debate over retail tokenized deposits and their role alongside stablecoins and central bank money. The bank is marketing this as a way for savers to benefit from blockchain efficiencies while remaining in the traditional deposit framework rather than moving into separate digital assets.

Within that discussion, the phrase tokenized deposits is often contrasted with privately issued stablecoins. However, Monument’s approach keeps balances as bank liabilities, subject to prudential rules, rather than standalone crypto tokens whose value depends on an external reserve structure.

Beyond Monument: a Banking-as-a-Service play

The announcement also signals a wider commercial agenda. Monument said its affiliate Monument Technology plans to package this functionality into its banking as a service platform, allowing third-party institutions to integrate similar on-chain deposit models.

Moreover, if other banks adopt the same blueprint, the initiative could seed a broader ecosystem of monument bank tokenisation tools across U.K. and potentially international markets, all built around regulated deposits rather than unregulated crypto native instruments.

Summary

By moving up to 250 million pounds of savings onto Midnight while retaining full backing and FSCS coverage, Monument is testing how a U.K.-regulated bank can use public blockchain rails without leaving the existing legal framework. If successful, the model could influence how other lenders approach digital ledger technology for everyday deposits.