Money itself was the week's biggest tech story. On September 24, the US Federal Reserve proposed the first detailed rulebook for dollar-backed stablecoins, while Britain's biggest banks moved money on blockchain rails without touching a stablecoin at all. Add a major report warning of an 11 trillion dollar shift toward tokenized deposits, and the future of payments got measurably closer.
The Fed puts stablecoin rules on paper
The Federal Reserve on Thursday proposed new rules for issuers of dollar-backed cryptocurrency tokens known as stablecoins, as required by the GENIUS Act, which established a federal regulatory framework for the tokens. Under the proposal, Fed-supervised payment stablecoin issuers would have to fully back their tokens with certain reserve assets such as short-term Treasury bills, meet standardized capital requirements addressing credit and operational risks, and follow new risk-management standards.
The proposal would also introduce guidelines for Fed-supervised banks that custody reserves on behalf of stablecoin issuers, clarify which stablecoin activities banks may engage in, and establish a tailored application process for banks that want to issue their own stablecoins. The Fed will accept public comment for 60 days after the proposals are published in the Federal Register. For the sector, the significance is less about any single token than about who gets to mint dollars on chain, with full-reserve rules favoring the institutions that already hold safe assets and run serious compliance operations.
UK banks choose tokenized deposits over stablecoins
On the same day, Britain's biggest banks, including Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and HSBC, completed the first interbank transfers of tokenized deposits on blockchain rails without using stablecoins. Lloyds, NatWest and Barclays ran two mortgage transactions, while a separate group of banks tested a simulated marketplace purchase.
The trial, part of UK Finance's Great British Tokenised Deposit project, uses programmable deposits that reduce fraud while keeping liabilities on bank balance sheets. The project will now set up a dedicated company and rulebook and aims to issue three tradable digital bonds settled with tokenized deposits in the first quarter of 2027. The Bank of England's preference is clear: bank-issued tokens, not privately issued stablecoins, are the favored path for digital money.
Capgemini warns of an 11 trillion dollar shift
The timing of both moves is underlined by the Capgemini World Payments Report, which warns that banks face an 11 trillion dollar shift toward tokenized deposits. The report's message is that tokenization is no longer a crypto sideshow but a structural migration of how money moves, and banks that treat it as optional risk being left behind.
Tokenized investing goes mainstream
The tokenization wave is also reaching investment products. Ondo Finance and BlackRock launched intelligent portfolios delivering tokenized multi-asset strategies on chain, while Coinbase's tokenized stocks topped 1 billion dollars in volume in their first month, reported on September 24. Tokenized stocks are going from experiment to measurable market in a single quarter.
Cards and crypto converge
The payments industry kept pace. Visa and Reap expanded stablecoin credit cards to more than 100 markets worldwide, Mastercard is powering SoFi's 25 billion dollar card program with stablecoin payment settlement, and Bitpace linked to Fireblocks' 200 billion dollar network for stablecoin cross-border payments. Not everyone is joining the regulated path: Tether opted out of the EU stablecoin regulation's license over its 60 percent bank-reserve rule, a reminder that the biggest stablecoin issuer still prefers operating outside the new rulebooks.
For Pakistan, these developments matter more than they might seem. Remittances and freelancer earnings are the country's financial lifelines, and both the Fed's stablecoin rules and the UK's tokenized-deposit experiment are shaping the rails that cross-border money will travel on. With Raast already proving that instant, account-based payments can scale at home, Pakistan has a seat at the table in the tokenized-money era, provided regulators and banks keep building.
