A consortium of firms is set to trial solutions using electronic bills of lading (eBLs), a digital pound and stablecoins to improve SME access to trade finance, as part of the Bank of England’s Digital Pound Lab.
Nobo Finance, Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs will participate in phase two of the Digital Pound Lab, described as “an experimental platform” that creates a “simulated environment to test the potential capabilities of a digital pound”.
The platform does not use real customers or money.
One workstream will test whether stablecoins and a digital pound can enable “near-instant” cross-border settlement when combined with an eBL-backed invoice factoring flow.
In this scenario, an exporter would receive an advance via a stablecoin rail, and a UK importer would make the final settlement in digital pounds.
Under the scheme, Polygon is providing the technical infrastructure via its open money stack, which the tech firm said has “processed trillions in stablecoin volume” across currencies such as the US dollar, Singapore dollar and Brazilian real, and aims to solve interoperability challenges by giving users a “single integration point”.
The open money stack includes fiat-to-stablecoin conversion, embedded wallets integrated directly into applications, stablecoin settlement and smart contract infrastructure for SMEs, enabling digital contracts stored on a blockchain to carry out actions automatically when certain conditions are met.
Marc Boiron, chief executive of Polygon, said: “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.”
Another workstream, dubbed “SME bankable profile” and led by trade finance platform Nobo, aims to provide SMEs with a financial identity they own and can carry to any lender or market, by combining identity standards from business intelligence firm Dun & Bradstreet and smart contract infrastructure from Polygon.
“Cross-border SME trade finance is still slowed by fragmented verification, manual checks and settlement that can take days,” the consortium said.
“Phase two gives the consortium a controlled environment to test whether that changes.”
The trade finance gap, defined as the difference between demand and supply of trade finance facilities worldwide, has stabilised at an estimated US$2.5tn since 2023, according to the Asian Development Bank.
SMEs have typically found it hardest to secure trade finance, and the percentage of those businesses whose trade finance requests are rejected fell to 41% in 2025, compared to 45% in 2023.
The Digital Pound Lab’s latest developments follow its first phase, where Nobo worked with Applied Blockchain to test conditional business-to-business payments, which release automatically once agreed conditions are met, aimed at streamlining cross-border trade finance for SMEs.
Ayo Ojerinola, founder and chief executive of Nobo, said: “Trade finance is multi-party by nature, but the workflows, data and settlement paths still don’t connect cleanly.
“The Digital Pound Lab gives us a safe environment to test our innovations, improving coordination across participants, and transforming how cross-border trade actually works today.”
Sara de la Torre, head of financial services at Dun & Bradstreet, added: “Smoother trade finance for SMEs depends on trust – and that starts with reliable business identity and risk data.”
The UK government is pushing ahead with plans for digital trade. The Department for Business and Trade recently published a series of papers exploring ways of accelerating trade digitalisation, covering digital trade corridors, identity and documentation.
