Radi El Haj, chief executive of payments technology provider RS2, says the Bank of England‘s proposed stablecoin framework represents a solid regulatory foundation but warns that rules alone will not determine whether stablecoins become a mainstream payments rail. Speaking in response to the Bank’s recent policy statement and draft rules on systemic stablecoins, El Haj argues the real test lies in whether issuers can build the operational trust and infrastructure integration that drove adoption of cards, digital wallets and real-time payment schemes before them.
Regulation as floor, not ceiling
The Bank of England’s draft framework, published this month, sets out reserve quality requirements, redemption rights and operational resilience standards for stablecoins deemed systemic. El Haj describes this as a reflection of a broader market shift: the debate has moved on from whether the underlying technology is viable to whether institutions, businesses and consumers can rely on it at scale.
“The Bank’s focus on reserve quality, redemption rights and operational resilience reflects a wider shift in the market,” he said. “The conversation has moved beyond whether stablecoin technology works. The priority now is whether institutions, businesses and consumers can trust it at scale. That trust comes from transparency, operational resilience, robust controls and real-time visibility across payment flows and risk.”
El Haj also placed the UK’s position in a wider competitive context. Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation is already in force, the United States is advancing federal stablecoin legislation, and regulators in Asia and the Middle East have been shaping digital asset frameworks for some time. Dollar-backed stablecoins continue to dominate global trading and settlement volumes, while sterling-denominated equivalents remain comparatively small. El Haj’s view is that the UK has not missed its moment but that the opportunity has changed: the priority is not the volume of stablecoins issued but their ability to function within the issuing, acquiring, settlement, reconciliation and reporting infrastructure that supports payments at scale.
Infrastructure, not issuance
The argument maps onto a pattern RS2 and its peers in processing infrastructure know well. Adoption of a payment instrument has historically required three things to converge: workable technology, regulatory legitimacy and operational trust from the institutions that move and settle money. Cards and real-time payment schemes both took years to reach critical mass precisely because the back-office plumbing had to catch up with the consumer-facing proposition.
For stablecoins, the equivalent challenge is integration with core banking systems, correspondent banking rails and cross-border settlement mechanisms, none of which were built with tokenised money in mind. Several central banks, including the Bank for International Settlements through its Project mBridge work, have been exploring how wholesale digital currency can interoperate with existing correspondent relationships. The BIS and several national central banks have concluded that infrastructure compatibility is as important a constraint as regulatory design.
The commercial read-across for payment processors is significant. If stablecoins do achieve meaningful scale in cross-border wholesale settlement, the firms that own the integration layer between tokenised rails and traditional banking infrastructure stand to capture a new category of processing revenue. RS2’s framing of itself as a unified issuing and acquiring platform with orchestration, reconciliation and real-time visibility is consistent with positioning for exactly that opportunity, though the company did not make any specific commercial claims about its stablecoin roadmap in this statement.
What the industry is watching now is how quickly the Bank of England moves from draft to final rules, whether the framework extends to retail-facing stablecoins in addition to systemic wholesale instruments, and how UK standards align with MiCA’s reserve and redemption requirements to avoid fragmentation for firms operating across both jurisdictions.
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