The central bank dropped a proposal that would have capped individual retail holdings at £20,000 per stablecoin and business holdings at £10 million. In their place, the BoE adopted a temporary aggregate issuance guardrail of £40 billion per systemic stablecoin. That ceiling applies at the issuer level, not the user level, meaning retail customers and businesses face no individual ceiling on how much they can hold. The guardrail is subject to regular review and is intended to be removed once the BoE judges that risks to credit provision have sufficiently diminished.

The framework also published a draft Code of Practice, opening a public consultation window that runs until September 22, 2026. A final Code of Practice is targeted for the end of this year, with regulated stablecoin operations expected to begin in 2027.

How the Framework Evolved

The original proposals, published in a consultation paper in November 2025, drew immediate criticism from law firms, crypto exchanges, and financial institutions. Governor Andrew Bailey framed the original vision in that paper, stating: "We are designing a regulatory regime for stablecoins that is fit for the future." By May 2026, however, significant objections had accumulated. Coinbase's head of policy for Europe, Katie Haries, argued in May 2026 that "a cap on stablecoin holdings is a cap on innovation, with real and significant risks for UK competitiveness." The £10 million business cap drew particular analytical concern: at the transaction volumes typical of money transfer operators processing high-volume payments, that ceiling would have been reached almost instantly, making stablecoin-based payment rails economically unworkable at meaningful scale.

By May 2026, the BoE's own Deputy Governor for Financial Stability, Sarah Breeden, publicly acknowledged the problems. She told the Financial Times that the per-user limit approach was "cumbersome operationally for a temporary measure" and said the bank would "look hard to see if we have been overly conservative." The House of Lords Financial Services Regulation Committee added formal parliamentary pressure on June 2, publishing a cross-party report titled "Stablecoins: waiting for regulation" and calling explicitly on the BoE to reconsider both the holding limits and the reserve requirements.

What Remains in Place

The framework retains a prohibition on interest payments to stablecoin holders. Systemic stablecoins are not to function as savings or investment instruments under the BoE's approach.

Reserve requirements remain in the framework. The original proposal specified a 60/40 split, with 60% of reserves held in short-term UK government bonds and 40% held in unremunerated deposits at the Bank of England. Earlier reporting suggested the BoE was exploring a reduction of the unremunerated deposit floor from 40% to as low as 20%, but the final position on that specific ratio is pending direct verification against the official BoE June 22 policy statement and should not be treated as confirmed. That unremunerated deposit requirement carries a real cost: as reported by Decrypt in May 2026, citing industry analysis, it amounts to roughly £11.2 million per year for every £1 billion in circulation (calculated at 4% gilt yields), a burden that issuers would likely pass on to users in some form.

Dual regulatory oversight also remains. The BoE supervises prudential soundness and financial stability, while the Financial Conduct Authority handles conduct and consumer protection. HM Treasury must formally designate a payment system as systemic before BoE oversight applies.

Why This Matters Beyond London

The framework's practical importance extends well beyond UK-based users. The UK sends approximately £9.1 billion in formal remittances annually. The UK-to-Pakistan corridor alone accounts for around £4.24 billion per year; the UK-to-India corridor adds another £4.17 billion. UK-to-Nigeria and UK-to-Ghana flows represent the largest Africa-directed remittance volumes from any single European country.

The original per-user caps would have directly constrained these corridors. A £20,000 individual ceiling would have limited higher-volume senders, while the £10 million business cap would have made stablecoin-based remittance rails economically unworkable for money transfer operators at meaningful scale. The £40 billion aggregate guardrail removes those friction points entirely at the user and operator level.

Stablecoin remittance products already report average fee savings of roughly 40% compared to traditional transfer methods. For UK-Africa corridors where conventional fees can reach 5 to 8 percent of transaction value, regulated GBP stablecoin infrastructure represents a material cost reduction. The FCA-approved app Yousend is already live for transfers from the UK to Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Tanzania.

The GBP stablecoin market remains small. CoinGecko data puts total GBP stablecoin market capitalisation at roughly $12 million, compared to Tether's $184 billion. For context, the global stablecoin market carries approximately $280 to $300 billion in total supply, annual remittance flows amount to around $400 billion worldwide, and Visa reported an annualised stablecoin settlement run-rate of $7 billion as of April 2026. Existing GBP products include GBPT (Poundtoken), which is FCA-regulated and KPMG-verified monthly, and GBPA from Agant, which launched in February 2026 targeting institutional use cases and is backed 1:1 with GBP. Other GBP stablecoins are also present in the market, including VNX British Pound and Mento British Pound, though each carries minimal capitalisation.

What Comes Next

The FCA's authorisation gateway for stablecoin issuers opens on September 30, 2026, with applications accepted through February 28, 2027. Revolut, Monee, ReStabilise, and VVTX are already participating in the FCA's regulatory sandbox. The broader legislative foundation, the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2026, is expected to come into force on October 25, 2027.

Demand-side infrastructure is advancing in parallel. Nigeria's central bank is piloting an eNaira-SWIFT corridor integration covering the UK-to-Nigeria remittance route, with a target launch in Q3 2026, a development that signals corridor readiness is building on both ends of the regulatory equation. Fintech firms in South Asia and Africa building toward UK-licensed payment rails now have a concrete regulatory timeline to work against.