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The UK’s home for tokenised equity. Independent news, insight and resources for founders raising capital, investors deploying it, and the firms supporting both — as the regulation, infrastructure and opportunity converge.

Banks Refused Accounts to Crypto and Digital Asset Firms So Parliamentary Group Launched Six Week UK Inquiry

  • Writer: Shawn Jhanji
    Shawn Jhanji
  • Jul 21
  • 3 min read
The All Party Parliamentary Group for Crypto and Digital Assets opened a cross party inquiry on 21 July into UK banks refusing accounts and restricting payments to cryptocurrency and digital asset businesses, giving the sector a six week window to put hard evidence behind a complaint it has made informally for years. If you are building tokenisation infrastructure in Britain, this is not a side issue. A tokenisation platform, a custodian or a digital securities operator still needs a working current account, a merchant facility and a bank willing to process client money, and industry group CryptoUK has spent several years collecting reports of firms being refused, closed down without explanation, or quietly deprioritised by high street lenders wary of compliance risk. The APPG's call for evidence, issued on Tuesday, is the clearest sign yet that Parliament is treating that friction as a policy problem rather than an anecdote. The inquiry is inviting written evidence from across banking, payments, fintech and crypto over the six weeks to 31 August, and has framed its questions broadly. It wants to understand how widely banks are restricting service to crypto and digital asset firms, whether those restrictions are proportionate to the risk involved, and what the knock-on effect has been for consumers, businesses, innovation and competition. The group is also looking specifically at the professional services layer around the sector, noting that insurance and other supporting services have proved similarly hard to access. APPG co-chair Lord Vaizey of Didcot said the group has heard consistent reports over a number of years from crypto and digital asset businesses about difficulty accessing bank accounts and banking services, alongside concerns about restrictions on crypto related transactions more broadly. That framing matters because it moves the conversation from individual firms complaining about individual banks to a pattern Parliament is now willing to examine formally. The timing lands awkwardly for the UK's own tokenisation ambitions at time when HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion published a report just last week, backed by a 54 firm taskforce including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and HSBC, and the FCA's crypto regime gateway opens in September. Ministers have been explicit that they want Britain to be a serious hub for digital asset activity. A banking access chokepoint sitting underneath that ambition, largely invisible to the institutions being courted at the top of the market, is exactly the kind of structural friction that tends to fall hardest on smaller platforms and earlier stage firms rather than the banks and asset managers already inside the taskforce tent. For founders and platforms in the tokenised equity space specifically, the inquiry is worth watching even though its immediate focus is cryptoasset firms rather than equity tokenisation businesses. Many of the custody, payments and settlement providers that tokenisation platforms rely on sit in the same regulatory grey zone that has made banks cautious, and a formal parliamentary finding on proportionality could shape how those providers are treated as the sector scales.

The All Party Parliamentary Group for Crypto and Digital Assets opened a cross party inquiry on 21 July into UK banks refusing accounts and restricting payments to cryptocurrency and digital asset businesses, giving the sector a six week window to put hard evidence behind a complaint it has made informally for years.


If you are building tokenisation infrastructure in Britain, this is not a side issue. A tokenisation platform, a custodian or a digital securities operator still needs a working current account, a merchant facility and a bank willing to process client money, and industry group CryptoUK has spent several years collecting reports of firms being refused, closed down without explanation, or quietly deprioritised by high street lenders wary of compliance risk. The APPG's call for evidence, issued on Tuesday, is the clearest sign yet that Parliament is treating that friction as a policy problem rather than an anecdote.


The inquiry is inviting written evidence from across banking, payments, fintech and crypto over the six weeks to 31 August, and has framed its questions broadly. It wants to understand how widely banks are restricting service to crypto and digital asset firms, whether those restrictions are proportionate to the risk involved, and what the knock-on effect has been for consumers, businesses, innovation and competition. The group is also looking specifically at the professional services layer around the sector, noting that insurance and other supporting services have proved similarly hard to access.


APPG co-chair Lord Vaizey of Didcot said the group has heard consistent reports over a number of years from crypto and digital asset businesses about difficulty accessing bank accounts and banking services, alongside concerns about restrictions on crypto related transactions more broadly. That framing matters because it moves the conversation from individual firms complaining about individual banks to a pattern Parliament is now willing to examine formally.


The timing lands awkwardly for the UK's own tokenisation ambitions at time when HM Treasury's Wholesale Digital Markets Champion published a report just last week, backed by a 54 firm taskforce including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and HSBC, and the FCA's crypto regime gateway opens in September.


Ministers have been explicit that they want Britain to be a serious hub for digital asset activity. A banking access chokepoint sitting underneath that ambition, largely invisible to the institutions being courted at the top of the market, is exactly the kind of structural friction that tends to fall hardest on smaller platforms and earlier stage firms rather than the banks and asset managers already inside the taskforce tent.


For founders and platforms in the tokenised equity space specifically, the inquiry is worth watching even though its immediate focus is cryptoasset firms rather than equity tokenisation businesses. Many of the custody, payments and settlement providers that tokenisation platforms rely on sit in the same regulatory grey zone that has made banks cautious, and a formal parliamentary finding on proportionality could shape how those providers are treated as the sector scales.


Key takeaways


  • The APPG for Crypto and Digital Assets opened a cross party inquiry on 21 July into UK banks restricting or refusing accounts to crypto and digital asset firms, with written evidence invited until 31 August.

  • The inquiry will examine how widespread the restrictions are, whether they are proportionate, and their impact on consumers, businesses, innovation and competition, including for professional services such as insurance.

  • APPG co-chair Lord Vaizey of Didcot said the group has heard consistent reports of banking access problems from the sector over several years.

  • The inquiry follows HM Treasury's 13 July tokenisation taskforce report and comes ahead of the FCA's crypto regime gateway opening in September, highlighting a gap between institutional tokenisation ambition and ground level banking access.

  • Smaller tokenisation platforms and their custody and payments providers, not just cryptoasset exchanges, have a direct interest in how the inquiry's findings shape future guidance on proportionate account access.


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