NOBO Finance Limited, Dun & Bradstreet, and Polygon Labs are testing whether a stablecoin and a simulated digital pound can settle the same cross-border payment in a single flow as part of Phase 2 of the Bank of England’s Digital Pound Lab.
The consortium is one of 12 participants listed in Phase 2 of the Digital Pound Lab, which the Bank of England states does not imply approval or endorsement of any firm or product.
Exporter Paid in Stablecoins, Importer Settles in Digital Pounds
The consortium is developing an electronic bill of lading-backed invoice factoring flow with multi-rail settlement, according to the announcement shared with The Crypto Times. In the tested flow, an exporter receives an advance through a stablecoin rail while a UK importer completes final settlement in digital pounds.
Polygon Labs said it covers the stablecoin settlement leg and the smart contract infrastructure behind it, contributed through the Open Money Stack orchestration layer built on the Polygon network. The digital pound leg settles on the Bank of England’s simulated test rails.
Marc Boiron, chief executive of Polygon Labs, said in the announcement that for digital money to move the world’s trade, its different forms have to work together, and that interoperability is what gets value moving.
Second Workstream Builds a Reusable Credit Profile
The consortium’s other workstream is an SME Bankable Profile led by NOBO Finance. It combines consent-driven wallet transaction signals with open finance and business intelligence to produce a reusable, pre-qualified credit outcome.
Dun & Bradstreet contributes commercial intelligence and risk indicators through the D&B Commercial Graph. Polygon’s blog post states that Polygon Chain provides the on-chain infrastructure that lets the profile travel with the payment, while the announcement shared with The Crypto Times describes Polygon Labs as providing smart contract infrastructure that anchors the verifiable outcome and governs the consent and deal lifecycle.
Sara de la Torre, head of financial services at Dun & Bradstreet, said smoother trade finance for SMEs depends on trust, which starts with reliable business identity and risk data.
Ayo Ojerinola, founder and chief executive of NOBO Finance, said trade finance is multi-party by nature, while the workflows, data, and settlement paths do not connect cleanly.
Lab Uses No Real Money and No Real Customers
The Digital Pound Lab is a simulated test environment. Polygon Labs states there are no real customers, no real money, and no formal regulatory review attached to what is tested inside it. Participants build against a simulated digital pound.
The Bank of England has made no decision to issue a digital pound. The Bank states that the policy choices in participant demonstrations were determined by the participants for the purpose of the experiment and should not be taken as an indication of future Bank policy.
Polygon Labs states in its blog post that its participation does not imply Bank of England endorsement of Polygon Labs or its products, and that the use cases being tested do not indicate future Bank policy or the final design of a digital pound.
Consortium Is One of Twelve Phase 2 Participants
The Bank of England lists twelve participants in Phase 2: CRM.COM, Crunchfish, Finoxy Labs, Focus on Monesave, LINK in collaboration with Consult Hyperion, Leeds City Council with Aire Logic, NOBO Finance Limited in collaboration with Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon, OneID, TECHT Labs, The Scottish Centre of Excellence in Digital Trust and DLT, Transpact.com, and Yotra Ltd.
The Bank states it invited organizations to apply to test use cases in Phase 2 and selected participants in accordance with the lab’s terms of participation. It states that inclusion of participants’ demonstration videos does not imply bank approval or endorsement of the firms, their products, or their services.
Phase 2 involves two sets of demonstration use cases: those built by the Bank with Accenture, its Lab delivery partner, and those built by participants. The Bank has published demonstration videos from Crunchfish and TECHT Labs and states that other demonstrations will be included in a final Phase 2 update.
NOBO Completed Phase 1 With B2B Escrow Demonstration
NOBO completed Phase 1, where it demonstrated conditional business-to-business escrow payments relevant to trade finance workflows, according to the announcement.
The announcement describes cross-border SME trade finance as slowed by fragmented verification, manual checks, and settlement that can take days.
NOBO Finance Limited is a UK-based digital trade finance platform and does not lend directly. Dun & Bradstreet originated the D-U-N-S Number in 1963. Polygon Labs builds the technology behind Polygon, a Layer 2 network that scales Ethereum.
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