Former central bank officials Jon Cunliffe and Jochen Metzger have joined Fnality's UK and European boards as the bank-backed blockchain payments company prepares to expand its central bank money settlement network beyond sterling. According to reports from crypto.news, Cunliffe, who previously served as the Bank of England's deputy governor for financial stability, will chair the board of Fnality's UK entity, while Metzger, former Deutsche Bundesbank payments executive, has been appointed to the supervisory board of Fnality Europe and is expected to become its chair. Ron Berndsen, who previously served as head of oversight and head of market infrastructures policy at De Nederlandsche Bank, is joining the supervisory board of the Germany-based European business.
Fnality operates a blockchain-based wholesale payment system that allows participating financial institutions to settle obligations using funds backed by central bank money. As reported by crypto.news, the company launched its regulated sterling payment system in 2023 and is now seeking regulatory approvals for dollar- and euro-denominated versions of the network. The London-based company is backed by major financial institutions including Goldman Sachs, UBS, Santander, Bank of America and Citigroup. The company raised $136 million in Series C funding in September 2025, with WisdomTree, Bank of America, Citi, KBC Group, Temasek and Tradeweb leading or participating in the round, bringing total funding since 2019 to more than $280 million.
According to Cunliffe's interview with crypto.news, the company aims to integrate central banks and central bank money into new technologies pioneered in the crypto world. "It is really important that we find a way to get central banks and central bank money at the heart of the new technologies that were pioneered in the crypto world," Cunliffe stated. The company's sterling system has been used for real-time settlement of tokenized securities through delivery versus payment, foreign exchange transactions using payment versus payment and repo transactions. Fnality differentiates itself from other digital money models by providing regulated wholesale settlement using money linked to central bank balances.
The digital cash development is part of broader banking sector initiatives, with Swift moving its blockchain ledger into deployment in July with 17 global banks preparing to test tokenized deposit payments. According to crypto.news, HSBC and Standard Chartered completed the first live interbank transaction through Swift's blockchain ledger in August. Banks are also developing infrastructure around tokenized deposits and stablecoins, with Wells Fargo planning to launch tokenized deposits for selected corporate clients and JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo working through The Clearing House on a shared network launching in the first half of 2027.
