Bank of England Gets New Stablecoin Duty, Bill Heads to Lords in September

HM Treasury plans to hand the Bank of England a new secondary statutory objective: supporting innovation in payment systems, including stablecoins and other forms of digital money. Two independent outlets, CoinGape and Decrypt, reported the same underlying change this week, with CoinGape dating the announcement to 27 August 2026 and Decrypt reporting that the duty will be written into a bill due before the House of Lords in September.

What’s confirmed by two sources, what isn’t

The core fact, that the Bank will get a legal mandate to back payment and stablecoin innovation while financial stability stays its primary objective, appears in both reports. That gives it the two-source confirmation Cryptaur looks for before treating a policy claim as settled.

Two details sit on thinner ground. The 27 August publication date and the framing as an HM Treasury release come from CoinGape alone. The specific routing of the bill to the House of Lords in September comes from Decrypt alone. Neither claim contradicts the other; they simply haven’t both been checked against a second outlet yet, so we’re flagging them as single-sourced rather than independently verified.

Why a secondary objective matters, structurally

A secondary statutory objective is a specific legal mechanism, not a policy statement. It obliges a regulator to weigh a named goal, here payment-system innovation, when it exercises its powers, without displacing its primary duty. The Financial Conduct Authority already operates under a comparable secondary objective on competitiveness and growth, added in recent years. Extending a similar structure to the Bank of England would mark the first time the central bank carries an explicit, legally enforceable brief on digital money innovation rather than treating it as a discretionary consideration.

The distinction matters for how the Bank is expected to behave day to day. Financial stability remains the primary test it applies to any stablecoin or payments proposal. But once innovation is a statutory secondary objective, the Bank has to show it considered that factor too, and its decisions become more open to challenge if it doesn’t.

Context: the Bank’s existing stablecoin work

The move lands against the backdrop of the Bank’s ongoing work on a UK stablecoin regime, including its earlier discussion of holding limits for systemic sterling-denominated stablecoins. A statutory duty to support innovation gives that work a firmer legal footing and could shape how the Bank calibrates future rules, such as caps on individual or business holdings, once the bill takes effect.

For stablecoin issuers and payment firms eyeing UK licensing, the practical test will be whether a legal duty to consider innovation changes actual outcomes, not just the Bank’s public language. That answer depends on how the bill is drafted and how the Bank applies it once passed. The bill is due before the House of Lords in September.

Sources

• coingape.com
• decrypt.co