Bank of England wants next payment system to be blockchain-ready

The Bank of England wants to open its interbank settlement service to blockchain technologies as part of a major revamp of the system.

The bank is not suggesting that U.K. banks should begin processing bitcoin payments as a matter of routine. However, it does want the replacement for its ageing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system to be ready for whatever the industry is likely to throw at it when it goes into service in 2020.

It identified five key strategic drivers for the new RTGS system in a consultation document, “A new RTGS service for the U.K.: safeguarding stability, enabling innovation,” published Friday. Among them, it lists the need to interface with new technologies such as distributed ledgers. These are often referred to as blockchains, and include systems such as bitcoin and Ethereum.

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