The Bank of England has named NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs as participants in the second phase of its Digital Pound Lab, where the consortium will test how stablecoins and a potential digital pound could interoperate to improve cross-border trade finance.
The BoE’s Digital Pound Lab is an experimental platform that allows financial and technology companies to prototype potential products and payment use cases for a future digital pound, the UK’s proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Participants can use the simulated infrastructure to experiment with digital pound wallets, online and in-store payments, QR and NFC transactions, conditional payments, refunds, request-to-pay features, authentication and privacy tools. The Lab also provides a separate smart-contract platform for testing interoperability between blockchain systems and the centralized demonstration ledger.
NOBO previously completed Phase 1, demonstrating conditional B2B escrow payments designed for trade finance use cases. Phase 2 expands that foundation by bringing in Dun & Bradstreet’s commercial intelligence and Polygon Labs’ blockchain infrastructure.
The project aims to tackle the financing gap created by slow settlement and limited credit access for cross-border SMEs. Manual verification and fragmented financial data can make it difficult for smaller businesses to prove their creditworthiness, while waiting for international payments can tie up vital working capital.
Phase 2 will explore whether portable, verifiable financial identities and faster digital settlement can make cross-border SME financing more efficient.
“Smoother trade finance for SMEs depends on trust – and that starts with reliable business identity and risk data. By bringing the D&B Commercial Graph into NOBO’s work in the Bank of England’s Digital Pound Lab, we are helping build trust between trading partners and financial institutions, making SMEs more visible and bankable within cross-border trade and making it easier to match trade with financing and reduce friction in transactions,” NOBO Finance CEO Ayo Ojerinola said in a statement.
Two tracks for SME trade finance
The consortium will develop two main workstreams. The first, an SME Bankable Profile, is led by NOBO with Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs. It will combine consented wallet activity, open finance data and commercial intelligence to produce a reusable credit outcome.
Dun & Bradstreet will contribute business and risk data, while Polygon Labs will provide smart-contract infrastructure for verifiable records, consent management and deal lifecycles. The goal is to create a portable financial identity that SMEs can use across different lenders and markets.
The second workstream will explore eBL-backed invoice factoring with multi-rail settlement. Exporters would receive financing through a stablecoin rail, while UK importers would settle the final payment in digital pounds.
Polygon Labs will support the stablecoin leg through its Open Money Stack, which provides a common integration layer for stablecoin payments across applications and financial institutions.
“For digital money to actually move the world’s trade, its different forms have to work together, public and private, central bank money and stablecoins. This experiment tests exactly that, an exporter paid instantly in stablecoins while the importer settles in a digital pound, in a single flow. Interoperability is what gets value moving, and it is what Polygon’s Open Money Stack is built to enable. Regulators and central banks are asking the right questions, and we are glad to be part of that conversation at the infrastructure level,” Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron commented.
The two experiments will test how stablecoins, potential digital-pound payments and trusted business data can work together. Rather than replacing stablecoins, the project will explore how both forms of digital money can coexist while helping SMEs establish creditworthiness and access faster settlement.
