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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.

Ten European Banks Launch RL1 Blockchain Network as NatWest Holds Talks to Join

  • Writer: Shawn Jhanji
    Shawn Jhanji
  • Aug 3
  • 3 min read
Ten of Europe's largest financial institutions switched on a shared blockchain network for regulated markets on 28 July, and a UK bank is already circling the door. German infrastructure provider SWIAT confirmed that Regulated Layer One, known as RL1, began live operations as a European Cooperative Society registered in Luxembourg. The founding members are ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Credit Mutuel Alliance Federale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's innovation arm) and Seturion, the digital assets venture of Borse Stuttgart Group. KfW and L Bank continue to back the project as long standing supporters, and SWIAT confirmed that NatWest is in active discussions to join, giving the network its first concrete UK connection. Why this matters for UK founders and investors The UK has spent the past year building its own tokenisation plumbing: the FCA's fund tokenisation rulebook, the Digital Securities Sandbox, PISCES trading windows and the joint FCA and Bank of England roadmap for wholesale markets chief among them. RL1 is a reminder that continental Europe is not waiting to see how that plumbing turns out. A shared, bank owned settlement layer with ten institutions and roughly 700 million euro of transaction volume already run across three years of pilot activity gives European issuers a live, neutral rail for tokenised bonds, collateral and digital money, built and governed by the banks that will actually use it rather than by a single technology vendor.

Ten of Europe's largest financial institutions switched on a shared blockchain network for regulated markets on 28 July, and a UK bank is already circling the door.


German infrastructure provider SWIAT confirmed that Regulated Layer One, known as RL1, began live operations as a European Cooperative Society registered in Luxembourg. The founding members are ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Credit Mutuel Alliance Federale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered's innovation arm) and Seturion, the digital assets venture of Borse Stuttgart Group. KfW and L Bank continue to back the project as long standing supporters, and SWIAT confirmed that NatWest is in active discussions to join, giving the network its first concrete UK connection.


Why this matters for UK founders and investors


The UK has spent the past year building its own tokenisation plumbing: the FCA's fund tokenisation rulebook, the Digital Securities Sandbox, PISCES trading windows and the joint FCA and Bank of England roadmap for wholesale markets chief among them.


RL1 is a reminder that continental Europe is not waiting to see how that plumbing turns out. A shared, bank owned settlement layer with ten institutions and roughly 700 million euro of transaction volume already run across three years of pilot activity gives European issuers a live, neutral rail for tokenised bonds, collateral and digital money, built and governed by the banks that will actually use it rather than by a single technology vendor.


RL1 is built on SWIAT's existing distributed ledger infrastructure, which the company said has processed more than 50 transactions worth over 700 million euro since it began running three years ago. The cooperative structure, an SCE registered in Luxembourg, means member banks jointly own and govern the network rather than depending on a platform operated by a single commercial party, a structure that mirrors the consortium model UK infrastructure providers have discussed but not yet matched at this scale.


For UK platforms and law firms advising on tokenisation, RL1's launch sharpens a live question: whether UK infrastructure, PISCES operators, the Digital Securities Sandbox and any future gilt tokenisation pilot, ends up interoperable with networks like RL1, or whether UK and EU tokenised markets develop along separate, harder to reconcile rails. NatWest's discussions with the consortium suggest at least one major UK bank sees value in being inside the room rather than watching from outside it.


What comes next


SWIAT and the founding members have not set a public timetable for onboarding additional institutions, but the cooperative structure is explicitly designed to expand. Any further UK bank joining, or a formal bridge between RL1 and PISCES linked infrastructure, would be the clearest sign yet that UK and EU tokenisation efforts are converging rather than competing. For now, RL1 stands as the most concrete example yet of European banks choosing to build shared, regulated tokenisation infrastructure together rather than each pursuing a proprietary platform.


Key Takeaways


  • RL1, a new pan European blockchain network for regulated finance, went live on 28 July with ten founding banks including ABN AMRO, DZ BANK and Standard Chartered's SC Ventures.

  • NatWest is in active talks to join, the first concrete UK link to the network.

  • The cooperative is built on three years of SWIAT infrastructure that has already processed over 700 million euro in transactions.

  • It raises a live question for UK tokenisation infrastructure: interoperability with EU rails such as RL1, or a separate, harder to reconcile track.

  • No public timetable yet for further members joining, but the structure is designed to expand.


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