UK Treasury Unveils Payment Services Modernization Plan to Promote Asset Tokenization and AI Payment Regulation

Foresight News reports that the UK Treasury, along with Economic Secretary Lucy Rigby, announced a series of measures during London Fintech Week aimed at modernizing payment services regulation and enhancing the competitiveness of UK fintech. The core of the plan includes establishing a unified regulatory framework that integrates traditional payments with tokenized payments (covering stablecoins and tokenized deposits) and legislating for stablecoin payments to reduce administrative burdens for related companies. Additionally, the UK government has appointed Chris Woolard as the Wholesale Digital Markets Champion to lead efforts in promoting financial asset tokenization and wholesale digital market strategies. The plan will also explore regulatory adjustments for payments made by AI agents and grant new powers to the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to oversee the future development of Open Banking. Other measures include allocating an additional £1 million in funding to the Centre for Finance, Innovation, and Technology (CFIT) and planning to merge the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) into the FCA to streamline regulatory processes.