• Bank of Commonwealth

About the Bank of Commonwealth

We are the central bank of the Union State of British Commonwealth.

The mission of our bank

The mission of the Bank of Commonwealth is to promote monetary and financial stability that is financially inclusive in the Commonwealth financial and money markets.

Financial inclusivity
Stable currency
C£
Growth markets
Healthy financial system

We promote and enforce financial inclusivity

As one of our main priorities, we work with the member participants of the Commonwealth financial and money markets to ensure that you can rely on banking or payment services and that you always have access to safe and accessible means to pay for things easily and securely and that all financial participants are treated equally without third-parties to interfere.

We work to keep the Commonwealth pound stable

As the sole authority on monetary policy it is our job is to protect the value of your money by ensuring that each Commonwealth pound maintains an inherent stable asset-backed value, so your money keeps its purchasing power.

We produce the secure and asset-backed banknotes denominated in the Commonwealth pound. They have security features that make them difficult to counterfeit (fake). Only we can issue banknotes in the British Commonwealth.

We further work to promote monetary stability by ensuring that transactions involving the Commonwealth pound relate to stable value exchanges and that such value and prices rise annually at less than 1%. The measure of how much prices go up over time is called inflation, and 1% inflation is good for the growth of the Commonwealth money markets.

We enable this by ensuring that the issuance and lending of money is in line with held assets, by buying and selling such assets, and by setting interest rates.

We work to ensure the financial system remains healthy

We ensure and promote the financial stability of Commonwealth Banking and the Commonwealth financial markets while contributing to the robust and efficient operation of financial infrastructures and payment systems by developing financial policy.

We ensure resilient banking and regulate and supervise all banks, building societies, credit unions, insurers, investment firms and other financial firms authorised in the British Commonwealth that are members of Commonwealth Banking, so you know they are safe, sound and run well.

Division of Technology

The Division of Technology of the Bank of Commonwealth seeks to leverage research and technology to drive the next generation of borderless and accessible open banking and payment solutions globally.

The Division of Technology builds the Commonwealth Banking infrastructure and delivers the technology layer of financial services as part of what is known as the Commonwealth Technology Stack which provides the networks, infrastructure and technologies used by Commonwealth Banking.

The Commonwealth Technology Stack is developed by the Commonwealth Digital Service and our bank is one of the contributors, integrating into the technology stack the micro services that make up the technology layer, reducing cost and increasing resilience.

The technology layer is what powers the payment systems and ensures resilient end-to-end payment services based on breakthrough technology that allows transactions to be settled in as low as 0.37 milliseconds.

The Division of Technology was known as the British Technology Bank before 2024 and 10% of the Division is owned by the Bank of England.

YE 2022

£216 bn.
Total assets
£203 bn.
Deposits (fintech)
£5.3 bn.
Deposits (other)
£204m
Investments held
£506m
Credit issued
£39.1m
Net profit

One of the non-negotiable requirements of SWIFT membership is being regulated by a member state central bank.

However, being regulated by a member state central bank means both in practice and in law, that nor the bank’s lawful owners, nor the bank’s board can actually have full control of the bank - meaning that such control is in the hands of a hidden group of people.

This ultimately makes such a bank an agent of the government, creating conflicts of interest, and leaves any client of such bank exposed to numerous issues including unfair compliance practices.

Since the British Technology Bank has a desire to protect clients and allow them full control of their money, and actually to serve clients, it is regulated by a central bank in a jurisdiction that supports this concept in full and allows for the simplicity of a bank to actually be just a bank.

Thus, BTB is not regulated by a member state central bank, but an international central bank, the Bank of Commonwealth.

This however excludes the possibility of direct SWIFT membership, whereas SWIFT services (where possible) are purchased through partner banks.

SWIFT is just a financial message service, and the British Commonwealth has its own alternative solution in the form of CIMS, which is what BTB primarily uses to communicate with other financial institutions.

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