FCA Selects Four Firms to Test Stablecoin Services in Regulatory Sandbox, February 2026

On 25 February 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced the selection of four firms — Monee Financial Technologies, ReStabilise, Revolut, and VVTX — to participate in a dedicated stablecoin cohort of its Regulatory Sandbox programme. The action is at the testing stage; it does not constitute authorisation or approval of any stablecoin product. Testing began in Q1 2026, and findings will inform the FCA's final stablecoin policy rules, which the FCA expects to publish later in 2026.

The FCA operates the Regulatory Sandbox under its innovation mandate derived from the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA 2000), Section 3D (as amended), which requires the FCA to have regard to the desirability of promoting innovation in financial services. The sandbox programme allows firms to test products in real-world conditions with regulatory safeguards applied. The stablecoin cohort complements the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS), a joint FCA-Bank of England initiative running in parallel to test tokenised securities infrastructure. The FCA's final stablecoin rules will be set out in the Policy Statement following Consultation Paper CP25/14, which covers stablecoin issuance and cryptoasset custody.

The four selected firms' stablecoin proposals cover a range of use cases: payments, wholesale settlement, and crypto trading. Each firm receives feedback from FCA specialists during testing. The FCA received 20 applications for the stablecoin cohort. Stablecoin issuers and firms developing payment infrastructure using stablecoins should monitor the sandbox findings; the results will directly shape the final UK stablecoin issuance rules expected in summer 2026, ahead of the new cryptoasset regime going live in October 2027. Firms not selected for the sandbox may still seek pre-application support from the FCA prior to the authorisation gateway opening in September 2026.

The FCA noted that UK issuers of stablecoins will not pass interest from their own backing assets to holders. The FCA is still considering how further financial incentives could be shared with holders when UK-issued stablecoins are used in transactions. This constraint distinguishes UK-issued stablecoins from some overseas models and has direct implications for yield-bearing stablecoin designs targeting UK users.

Source: Financial Conduct Authority, Press Release, "FCA selects 4 firms to test stablecoin innovation in its Regulatory Sandbox," 25 February 2026, available at: https://www.fca.org.uk/news/press-releases/4-firms-selected-test-stablecoin-regulatory-sandbox. Verified 10 March 2026.

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