Fnality recruits ex-BoE deputy Cunliffe and two central bankers as euro and dollar systems take shape

Fnality, the London-based blockchain settlement company, has appointed Sir Jon Cunliffe, former deputy governor of the Bank of England, as chair of its UK board — headlining a trio of former central bankers joining the firm as it expands beyond its live sterling payment system toward euro and US dollar infrastructure.

The company said Thursday that Jochen Metzger, a former Deutsche Bundesbank director general for payments and settlement systems, had joined the supervisory board of its European subsidiary and was expected to chair it. Ron Berndsen, a former senior official at the Dutch central bank, also joined the Fnality Europe board.

The appointments land at a moment when wholesale blockchain settlement is moving from pilot to production across major financial centers, and when regulators are scrutinizing how tokenized markets will settle in central bank money.

What Fnality actually operates

Fnality’s sterling payment system launched in 2023 and is regulated by the Bank of England. It enables market participants — a consortium originally built around major global banks — to settle obligations using tokenized balances backed one-for-one by central bank money held at the Bank of England.

The company positions its infrastructure as the settlement layer for tokenized asset markets and for banks’ activity in stablecoins and tokenized deposits. Unlike public stablecoin issuers, Fnality’s model keeps the reserve assets in central bank accounts, aiming to eliminate settlement credit risk in wholesale payments entirely.

The hires signal how seriously the firm takes the regulatory dimension of that pitch. Cunliffe spent nearly two decades in senior roles at the Bank of England and the UK Treasury, including as the Bank’s lead for financial stability and its representative in Basel, where he chaired Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures meetings during critical periods of digital-asset policy formation.

Euro system in Germany, dollar system in Connecticut

Fnality has established a subsidiary in Eschborn, Germany, to develop its proposed euro payment system — the assignment that Metzger, the former Bundesbank payments chief, is expected to supervise as chair of the European board. The German entity gives the firm a foothold inside the eurozone’s regulatory perimeter as it seeks to replicate the sterling model with euro central bank money.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Fnality has set up Fnality Bank US in Stamford, Connecticut, where it is developing plans for a dollar payment system and engaging with US regulators. A US entity with bank status would be the natural vehicle for settling tokenized dollar obligations in central bank money, positioning Fnality alongside other wholesale settlement projects targeting the world’s largest currency.

“As the tokenisation of financial markets gathers pace, settlement in the safest assets available will be crucial to maintaining financial stability,” Cunliffe said in the announcement.

A 136 million USD vote of confidence

The company raised 136 million USD in a Series C funding round in September 2025, with participation from investors including Temasek, Euroclear and Goldman Sachs, according to data compiled by Traxcn. The investor mix — sovereign wealth, the world’s largest securities settlement firm and a bulge-bracket bank — reflects the infrastructure wager at the core of Fnality’s thesis: that tokenized markets need a new settlement asset, not just new rails.

The central banker recruitment also comes amid a broader revolving door between monetary authorities and digital-asset infrastructure firms. Just this week, acting CFTC chair Caroline Pham was reported to be joining MoonPay after leaving the agency, and former officials from the Bank for International Settlements and other institutions have taken roles at tokenization and stablecoin ventures throughout 2026.

Why wholesale settlement matters now

Fnality’s expansion tracks the accelerating institutional adoption of tokenized deposits and tokenized collateral. Recent weeks have brought live cross-border tokenized deposit transactions involving major banks, stablecoin settlement pilots at payment networks, and regulatory guidance in several jurisdictions treating tokenized deposits as legally equivalent to traditional bank deposits.

For tokenized markets to scale without introducing new systemic risks, the industry argument runs, final settlement must occur in central bank money — the same principle that underpins real-time gross settlement systems today. Fnality’s wager is that blockchain-native accounts at central banks, rather than stablecoins or commercial bank tokens alone, become the terminal settlement asset of tokenized finance.

Bringing in the people who ran payment systems at the Bank of England, the Bundesbank and the Dutch central bank is Fnality’s way of telling both regulators and bank clients that its euro and dollar systems will be built to central-bank standards from day one. Whether that translates into the wholesale adoption the firm’s backers are counting on will depend on regulators in Frankfurt and Washington embracing the model — conversations that Cunliffe, Metzger and Berndsen are now uniquely positioned to lead from the inside.