Bank of England Sets Key Meetings For Its Digital Pound Design

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) looks to be one of the key agendas for 2020 fro Britain’s central bank. Over the last two months, the central bank has accelerated the development of its Digital Pound.

While working around a key infrastructure that supports the central bank digital currency (CBDC), the BoE will be attending a key roundtable meeting on August 19 hosted by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF).

The key discussions during the meeting will be the possible designs for the Digital Pound. BoE’s senior FinTech specialist Simon Scorer will be there at the roundtable joined by other delegates like the Hungarian National Bank (Magyar Nemzeti Bank), ING Nederland, and the Swiss National Bank. Sky Guo, the CEO of enterprise-focused blockchain platform Cypherium, will also be a part of the roundtable discussion.

These top delegates will be majorly discussing the potential use of blockchain technology that can benefit several different models of CBDCs. This includes models for interoperable blockchain network for cross-border transactions, designs for programmable money, and the use of smart contracts.

Currently, central banks of major global economies have been in the experimentation phase and identifying ways in which CBDCs fits rightly within their financial ecosystem.

Since CBDCs are currently in the early phases on inception, Guo said that “now is the time to debate the advantages and disadvantages of infrastructural ideas, especially related to how these instruments will interact and operate with each other." 

As per OMFIF, the rising private sector participation in FinTech projects like stablecoins and digital currencies has pushed central banks to accelerate their job and seriously look into the issuance of CBDCs. Thus, the central banks have been digging more to unearth different infrastructure possibilities and the use of blockchain networks for CBDCs.

Earlier this year in March 2020, the central bank issued in-depth discussion papers on CBDCs. The paper analyses rapidly changing payment landscape and the potential role CBDCs can play in the bank’s monetary ecosystem along with financial stability.

The newly appointed BoE governor - Andrew Bailey - has been critical about public cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. However, he holds a positive outlook on the issuance of CBDCs.

Last month in July, the BoE governor said that the central bank will will seriously look in the matters of issuing a CBDC “as it does have huge implications on the nature of payments and society.”