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The UK Financial Conduct Authority has selected four firms—Monee Financial Technologies, ReStabilise, Revolut and VVTX—to participate in a stablecoin-focused cohort within its Regulatory Sandbox, the regulator said on 25 February 2026. The FCA said it received 20 applications and will use the cohort to test stablecoin services in a live environment, with work beginning in Q1 2026.
The FCA said sandbox testing will “primarily” focus on stablecoin issuance, covering use cases that include payments, wholesale settlement and crypto trading, and that participating firms will receive feedback from FCA specialists during the tests. The regulator also said findings from the cohort will help shape its final stablecoin rules later in 2026.
On the FCA’s cohort description, Monee is described as building a stablecoin aimed at cross-border issuance, trading and settlement of “digital securities,” with the regulator noting Monee is also involved in the Bank of England RTGS Synchronisation Lab and the Digital Securities Sandbox. ReStabilise is described as developing an institutional-facing issuance and custody platform, while the FCA says Revolut is exploring a GBP-denominated stablecoin backed by GBP reserve assets and VVTX is building a UK-based payments ecosystem with its own GBP stablecoin.
In regulatory context, the FCA linked the sandbox work to its wider programme to implement a UK cryptoassets regime. It said consultations on the future regulatory framework are “substantively complete,” with policy statements due “this summer,” and set out a timeline in which an authorisation gateway opens in September 2026 ahead of the new regime going live in October 2027. The stablecoin issuance and cryptoasset custody consultation paper (CP25/14) sets out proposals for regulating “qualifying stablecoins” and related custody arrangements.
Operationally, the FCA’s cohort page says tests will be conducted in line with firms’ existing permissions and registrations, and that test length will vary depending on readiness and whether firms are testing with live customers. The FCA also positioned the stablecoins cohort as complementing the Digital Securities Sandbox, a joint Bank of England–FCA initiative designed to support the use of new technology in financial market infrastructure.
For market participants, the immediate impact is limited to supervised testing under the sandbox framework rather than a change in general permissions; issuers and infrastructure providers in the cohort will run FCA-supported tests focused on issuance and specified use cases, while platforms and institutional users involved in those pilots may be asked to participate in trial workflows. Regulators and policymakers will use the results to inform the FCA’s forthcoming stablecoin rulemaking and the sequencing of the broader cryptoassets regime implementation.
