Revolutionizing Retail Banking: Monument Bank’s Tokenization of Deposits

Welcome to FinTech TV.

For years, traditional blockchains have operated on transparency, where every transaction is visible to the public, and that is a complete dealmaker for regulated banks.

Now Monument revealed it is becoming the first bank to securely tokenize retail deposits, and they are partnering with Midnight, a new network powered by.

Knowledge cryptography that delivers rational privacy.

Well, joining me at Digital Asset Summit 2026 in New York City is Mintoo Bhandari, the founder of Monument Bank.

Mintu, great to have you here.

Thank you so much for joining us.

It's nice to be here with you, Rey.

Well, this announcement that you just made, I do want to get your take on the target demographic and what this, what makes this different.

So the, the demographic is, uh, people that have money to invest, uh, that are ambitious, probably time poor, uh, we kind of refer to it as a community called the mass affluent, which is a horrible term.

There's, it's not very descriptive, but it's people that are generally hardworking, trying to raise families, trying to grow their wealth, uh, trying to create financial freedom for themselves, typically have.

A wealth of 1000 to 5 million in that range, so not so much that they're in private banking.

So this is kind of high end of retail.

Yeah, so for viewers out there who are wondering what the implications are of this, can you walk us through it?

Yeah, so let me tell you that what we're trying to do is something very unique.

It's a step forward.

A lot of banks have played around with.

Uh, concepts of of uh blockchain, DLT, how to use it.

There's been some internal coins that are minted by some of the large banks, and they're using that to show how transactions work.

How we're different is we're actually offering the retail public the opportunity to open a deposit account where it is actually generating yield interest in pounds in sterling.

That means that they have a Bank of England.

Uh, backed and guaranteed account, so it's very safe.

It's just like a regular and real bank account, but we're mirroring that deposit on a blockchain so that they actually have the ability to use that in the future for acquiring assets that were in the past only available to the very wealthy.

So that private blank banking client, whether it's private equity, commodity funds, things that are usually very difficult for the average person to invest in, but have been the best asset classes for a long time, we're now making it possible for them to have that optionality.

Yeah, and speaking of which, obviously when we're talking about a regulated space like this, that geography does matter.

But can you tell us what's happening when it comes to the regulatory landscape over the UK?

Yes, actually it's a little bit different from what we're seeing in the US.

So the US and the environment has been very focused on stablecoin.

And a stablecoin is a very powerful tool for doing transactions.

So it's like the cash in your, in your wallet.

Now in an old fashioned wallet, if you were to carry around cash, that money doesn't earn interest, but it can be used to be spent.

And that is essentially what we refer to as M0 money in economics terms, in traditional economics.

A checking account and a savings account is M1 money, and M1 money generates interest.

So what we're doing is actually doing with with the backing of the Bank of England, the approach is to actually be an M1 money provider.

And not an M0 stablecoin provider.

So this is less transaction, it's more about growing your money.

Yeah, and finally, I do want to get your take on the economics of the network.

So tell us a little bit more about this and of course the role of privacy.

Yes, so we've teamed up with the Midnight Foundation who has focused on creating Uh, what I would call efficiency, privacy, and security as a layer on top of what we do generally as a bank.

So what we're able to do is we're already very careful, we protect people's money.

We're, we're very secure and really only transparent to the regulator.

And the accounts are only transparent to the clients, so we wanted to replicate that in next generation technology.

And so Midnight's enabling us to do that.

So the regulator has full clarity and transparency.

We have full audit trails, full regulatory compliance, and yet the only people that can see the accounts are the clients.

So they have control of their money, and it's very safe, very secure, and these sort of layers of security that are provided are next generation.

So that's, that's what we're bringing uh with the Midnight Foundation.

But frankly, what we're doing is just enabling retail for the first time to actually have access to a protected, secure bank account that generates interest.

And finally, before I let you go, you're here stateside at Digital Asset Summit 2026, and I'm sure you've started having conversations with stakeholders.

So give us an idea of the landscape right now and the temperature in the room.

Oh, it's fantastic.

I think people are I, I think people are really trying to figure out how now at this point in time, the technology has come to a very robust point where we can bring traditional finance and banking together with next generation technology.

As you said in your opening, traditional finance has been very reluctant, and it hasn't been easy, frankly.

But the evolution today and in this conference.

We're seeing that we're at that sweet spot.

And, you know, there's other technologies, I don't know if you've heard, but there's this technology called artificial intelligence that's come out, that also is gonna have a big impact, right?

It's gonna make things more manageable, better insights, better controls.

Uh, there's gonna be lots of interesting technology, uh, confluences that are happening today that weren't possible a few years ago.

And before I let you go, since you mentioned AI, what are you looking forward to when it comes to this intersection of digital assets as well as AI?

Using it to drive efficiency.

So essentially it just makes things faster, uh, I think in many ways.

You know, more operable, more, more, more efficient, uh, so, you know, from a cost and speed perspective, we're able to do much more, but also with more confidence.

So we don't take people out of the equation.

We, we say to people all the time that, you know, we think that humans with AI. is the right, the right combination.

So we want to always keep that oversight in control and make sure that everything, you know, there is no hallucination effect that we're suffering from.

So we have to be very careful of that.

Uh, but the combination of the two is, is better than AI alone or humans alone.

Well, I think that is a good way to look at that equation.

So Minu, I appreciate your time and thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you for having me.

A pleasure.

Thanks.