The UK government is doubling down on its ambition to dominate the future of finance, announcing a sweeping package of measures during Fintech Week in London to modernise its payments ecosystem and position the country as a global leader in innovation.
Central to the push is the appointment of Chris Woolard CBE, a Partner at EY and former interim CEO of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as the government’s new Wholesale Digital Markets Champion.
Officials described the move as part of the next “digital big bang” for the UK’s financial sector, centered on tokenisation – representing financial assets as digital tokens on a blockchain.
Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby said the package backs Britain’s thriving fintech industry to “go even further and faster in driving growth,” while building a “secure, competitive” payments system ready for rapid technological change.
What is the “digital big bang”?
The term echoes past City of London transformations, signaling a major shift toward tokenised wholesale financial markets.
Woolard’s role involves providing market leadership and coordinating industry efforts to build a tokenised ecosystem, aligning with the government’s Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy.
This builds on the Leeds Reforms – the Chancellor’s ten-year plan to make the UK the world’s top destination for financial services investment. The new measures aim to create a more agile regulatory framework that keeps pace with innovation while protecting consumers.
Key elements include:
- Integrating regulation of traditional and tokenised payments (including stablecoins and tokenised deposits) into a single, coherent framework.
- Regulating stablecoins specifically for payments use, tied to a forthcoming regulated activity for stablecoin issuance.
- Legislation to reduce administrative burdens for firms offering stablecoin payments, while maintaining safeguards.
- New powers for the FCA to advance Open Banking, enabling innovative payments within commercial schemes.
- Bringing the Payments Systems Regulator into the FCA to streamline oversight.
- An extra £1 million in funding for the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) to foster collaboration.
A forthcoming consultation will seek industry feedback on modernising payment services regulation to support these changes.
What does this mean for crypto?
For the crypto sector, the announcements represent a clear pro-innovation stance. The government explicitly recognizes the “transformative potential of digital assets and blockchain technologies” to reshape financial services.
By creating a unified framework for tokenised payments and cutting red tape for stablecoin providers, the UK is positioning itself as a welcoming hub for digital assets. Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to stable assets like fiat currencies, could soon play a bigger role in everyday payments, offering faster, cheaper cross-border transactions.
Woolard himself highlighted the need for collaboration between public and private sectors as markets shift from manual to digital, tokenised systems.
Industry voices welcomed the move: Innovate Finance CEO Janine Hirt called it critical for the UK to lead in “digital assets and stablecoin,” while highlighting the potential for agentic AI.
This fits into a broader 2026 regulatory push, with the FCA already prioritising UK-issued stablecoins for faster payments and running sandbox trials for tokenisation innovations.
AI agents and the future of payments
One of the most forward-looking elements is the government’s explicit exploration of how payments regulation should adapt to payments conducted by AI agents – autonomous systems that could initiate and manage transactions on behalf of users or businesses.
Zilch co-founder and CEO Philip Belamant noted that AI will shift payments from something consumers actively manage to something “intelligently managed and optimised in the background.”
The government aims to enable the “safe adoption” of such agentic AI in finance while updating rules to address new realities around consent, liability, and consumer protection.
This positions the UK ahead of many jurisdictions still grappling with how existing frameworks, designed for human-led transactions, apply to AI-driven commerce. Payments experts have flagged agentic AI as an emerging priority for 2026, potentially transforming everything from retail checkouts to wholesale settlements.
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