The Bank of England's Digital Pound Lab is testing whether stablecoins and a potential digital British pound can operate in the same cross-border trade-finance flow, in an experiment involving NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet and Polygon Labs. Under the setup, an exporter receives an advance through a stablecoin rail while a UK importer completes settlement using simulated digital pounds, according to a Wednesday announcement from the three companies. A separate workstream is building reusable credit profiles for small businesses by combining transaction data, open-finance information and Dun & Bradstreet's commercial risk data, with Polygon providing the smart contract infrastructure. The test is intended to reduce settlement delays and financing constraints that often hit small and medium-sized businesses in cross-border trade, where exporters can wait days to get paid after shipping goods. The lab uses no real customers or money, and the Bank of England has not committed to issuing a digital pound. The central bank has said participant-designed experiments in the lab should not be read as policy signals or endorsements. The project lands as UK regulators develop stablecoin rules and prepare financial-market infrastructure for tokenized assets, including draft rules for systemic sterling stablecoins published in June and proposed changes to payments infrastructure to support near-24/7 settlement.