Policy paper

UK-US Joint Statement on Stablecoins

Published 14 July 2026

As evinced by our joint Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future, the UK and US governments are committed to deepening our collaboration on capital markets and digital assets, ensuring that digital financial innovation strengthens, rather than fragments, our transatlantic marketplace. Both governments recognise that well-regulated stablecoins have the potential to promote efficiency and competition in our financial systems, modernise financial market infrastructure, and improve cross-border payments and transactions. Both governments also recognise the importance of promoting competition and innovation, protecting financial stability, safeguarding consumers, and maintaining public confidence in money, in a financial ecosystem that includes multiple forms of money.

To these ends, as our domestic stablecoin regimes continue to develop and through the Transatlantic Taskforce for Markets of the Future established in September 2025, the UK and US affirm the following shared view on stablecoins. This view is intended to promote convergence between our regimes, where such convergence may be appropriate and serve our shared interests, and to provide market participants with greater confidence and clarity upon which to pursue financial innovation.

1. The UK and United States affirm that stablecoins are an important vehicle for innovation in digital money. The UK and United States intend to enable the use of stablecoins in cross-border finance. Each jurisdiction intends to support safe, sound, and stable growth in the circulation and use of stablecoins for activities including payments and settlement in cross-border transactions and capital markets.

2. The UK and United States intend to stimulate competition and innovation through policies that facilitate the coexistence and circulation of different forms of digital money solutions. Both governments recognise the critical role of the private sector in the provision of money and payments, as well as of the public sector in setting standards, modernising regulatory and supervisory policy, and ensuring the soundness of money, payment, and settlement. The UK and United States share the objective of enabling the adoption of well-regulated private digital money, including stablecoins, tokenised deposits, and similar instruments.

3. The UK and United States intend to advance a timely, clear, and consistent legal, regulatory, and supervisory pathway for digital financial innovation, including for stablecoins. Each government intends to tailor its requirements to seek comparable outcomes for comparable risks and activities, seeking to advance financial stability while avoiding market distortions or disincentivising cross-border competition. Each government plans to employ timely and flexible regulatory and supervisory tools to provide market clarity on these pathways.

4. The UK and United States affirm that stablecoins held out as money should be fully backed, on at least a one-to-one basis, by high-quality, liquid assets. Eligible reserves should encompass an appropriate variety of high-quality, liquid assets, which should be clearly defined in each country’s stablecoin regulatory framework.

5. The UK and United States affirm that reserve, liquidity, and other prudential requirements for stablecoins should seek to mitigate risks and avoid unnecessary fragmentation. Considering insolvency, financial stability, and other relevant laws and regulations, each government intends to avoid prudential measures that would require inappropriately high levels of ring-fenced resources in their own jurisdictions. Such requirements should avoid fragmenting stablecoin arrangements or reducing operational efficiency in ways that would adversely affect financial stability or harm innovation.

6. The UK and United States intend to advance regulatory approaches that promote innovation and resilience, without imposing burdensome constraints that undermine commercial viability, create barriers to entry, or hinder competition. Neither government intends to impose burdensome reserve requirements that are disproportionate to risk and that create unwarranted barriers to entry.

7. The UK and United States support the integration of well-regulated stablecoins into activities including payments, settlement, and tokenised financial markets. Each government endorses market-driven access by stablecoin issuers and users to banking and other financial services relationships, including for use as settlement instruments in securities and commodities markets, subject to appropriate safeguards. Both governments affirm that providers of lawful, regulated stablecoin and digital-asset services should have fair, risk-based access to financial services and markets.

8. The UK and United States intend to set high standards for the custody, segregation, and protection of stablecoin reserves. Each government affirms that issuers of regulated stablecoins should always expect to redeem related obligations in a timely manner and with clear disclosure of policies on the nature of legal rights granted to holders. Reserve assets should be segregated from the issuer’s own funds and safeguarded to the benefit of stablecoin holders. In effecting these protections, both governments aim to reduce frictions in capital markets transactions in ways that foster cross-border stablecoin activity.

9. The UK and United States support clarity, predictability, and cross-border coordination in the event of any potential failure of a stablecoin issuer. Each government endeavours to create a framework that, in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy, restructuring, or resolution proceeding, provides for stablecoin holders a clear and protected legal claim on reserves, including priority ahead of other creditors, consistent with the laws of each jurisdiction. Such frameworks should also contemplate appropriate international coordination of cross-border insolvency proceedings affecting stablecoin arrangements.

10. The UK and United States affirm the importance of formal mechanisms to enable cross-border stablecoin activity as a feature of domestic regulatory and supervisory regimes. Subject to the laws, regulations, and processes of each jurisdiction, both governments intend to explore a clear pathway for stablecoins issued in each jurisdiction to access the market of the other.