The UK plans to issue its first G7 digital sovereign bond by early 2027

Comparatively, the UK plans to issue its first digital sovereign bond by early 2027, and will be the first G7 country to issue government debt on a distributed ledger.

The bond will be listed on the HSBC Orion platform and included in the Bank of England (BoE) and the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) digital securities sandbox to test shorter settlement times and lower costs. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said that the BoE plans to qualify the bond as collateral for market operations, so that banks can use the bond in central bank financing transactions.