Inside the Treasury’s plan to make the UK fintech world leader
Key Points
- Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby has set out the Treasury's plan to make the UK the world's most technologically advanced global financial centre, in a parliamentary answer on 28 April 2026.
- UK fintech attracted $3.6 billion in 2025, second globally behind the US ($25.1 billion) and ahead of India, the UAE and Singapore.
- The Treasury will create a single regulatory framework covering traditional payments, stablecoins and tokenised deposits, and consult the sector shortly.
- The FCA gets new powers over Open Banking, the Treasury will explore rules for AI agent payments, and Chris Woolard CBE has been appointed Wholesale Digital Markets Champion.
- Reforms sit inside Reeves' Leeds Reforms, the government's ten year plan for UK financial services competitiveness announced at Mansion House 2025.
Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby has set out the latest details on the government’s plan to make the UK the world’s most technologically advanced global financial centre.
In a written parliamentary answer to Labour MP Callum Anderson on Tuesday (28 April), Rigby noted that the UK fintech sector pulled in $3.6 billion (£2.6 billion) of investment in 2025, second only to the United States.
The Treasury wants to lock in that lead by overhauling payments rules, regulating stablecoins for everyday use, preparing for AI agents that pay on behalf of consumers, and giving the Financial Conduct Authority new powers over Open Banking.
Rigby unveiled the package at UK Fintech Week 2026 in London on 21 April, and the Treasury will soon publish a consultation inviting payments firms to provide feedback.
The reforms sit inside the Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy, also known as the Leeds Reforms, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced at her Mansion House speech in July 2025 and which set a ten-year horizon for the UK to become the world’s centre of choice for financial services investment.
A single rulebook for traditional and tokenised payments
The government will integrate payment services and electronic money regulation with the UK’s core regulatory approach for financial services, creating one coherent framework that covers traditional payments alongside tokenised payments such as stablecoins and tokenised deposits.
Rigby confirmed in her parliamentary answer that stablecoins will be regulated for use in payments where they are issued under a forthcoming new regulated activity for stablecoin issuance in the UK.
Draft secondary legislation published alongside the announcement will cut administrative burdens for firms wanting to provide stablecoin payments, while keeping consumer safeguards intact.
The Bank of England is running a parallel consultation on systemic sterling stablecoins, with proposals including temporary holding limits of £20,000 per coin for individuals and £10 million for businesses to protect bank funding during the transition to digital money.
AI agents enter the payments perimeter
The Treasury will also explore how payment services regulation should adapt to payments conducted by AI agents, which is a clear signal that ministers want to set rules before agentic finance outpaces the rulebook.
The FCA will get new powers to regulate the future of Open Banking, including underpinning the development of new Open Banking payment schemes within commercial frameworks.
The Treasury also confirmed an additional £1 million in funding for the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology, and set out its response to the consultation on bringing the Payments Systems Regulator into the FCA, streamlining the regulatory architecture.
Wholesale digital markets gets a champion
To drive industry adoption of tokenised wholesale financial markets, the Treasury has appointed Chris Woolard CBE, EY partner and former interim chief executive of the FCA, as Wholesale Digital Markets Champion.
Woolard will provide market leadership and coordinate industry implementation of the Wholesale Financial Markets Digital Strategy, with a brief to support a tokenised wholesale financial markets ecosystem.
UK fintech investment was largely flat year on year in 2025, rising just 0.4% on 2024 and remaining 37% below 2023 levels, but the second half of 2025 was significantly brighter than the first, with £1.4 billion raised between July and December, up 11% on the first six months.
Key UK deals included FNZ (£470 million in wealth management), Rapyd (£217 million in payments), Dojo (£137 million in payments and merchant acquiring), Quantexa (£126 million in data analytics) and Fnality (£98 million in payments).
