Digital pound news

Find out about the latest updates for a digital pound here.

Latest news

The first digital pound progress update was published in January 2025. This update summarises work over the past year, including how it relates to the evolving payments landscape, such as the recently announced National Payments Vision.

In January 2024, the Bank and HM Treasury published our response to the consultation response on a digital pound. We received thousands of responses from households and businesses. The Bank also responded to the Technology Working Paper.

In February 2023, the Bank and HM Treasury published a consultation paper on The digital pound: a new form of money for households and businesses? This paper analyses the public policy case for the digital pound in the UK and sets out our proposed design for it. We also published a Technology Working Paper alongside it. This paper looks at the technical aspects of the model we are considering, including performance, security, resilience, and energy use.

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Working groups

As part of the design phase, the Bank and HM Treasury will be looking to engage with experts on a range of topics. The Bank and HM Treasury will publish requests for information (RFI) on topics associated with the design of a digital pound.

Using the response from the RFIs we will form temporary working groups across the design phase to explore individual topics in more detail. These working groups are made up of representatives from a range of organisations whose experience is closely related to their relevant group.

Current working groups

  • How could we ensure privacy for individual users of a digital pound while maximising its potential benefits and use cases?

    Privacy in this context means the protection of users' data (personal data and transaction data), and ensuring that users have control and visibility over who can process their data and for what purposes. As noted in the 2023 Consultation Paper, privacy is different from anonymity. The digital pound would not be anonymous because the ability to identify and verify users is needed to prevent financial crime. The Government and the Bank of England have committed that they would not access users' personal data in a digital pound ecosystem. If a digital pound were to be launched in future, primary legislation would need to be introduced first and this would guarantee users' privacy. Additionally, the Bank is exploring technological solutions to prevent it from being able to access personal data via the core ledger.

    For the purposes of this work, "users" are the individuals using a digital pound, and this RFI seeks to explore the varying levels of privacy that a user would have towards the different private sector parties in the ecosystem, including the private sector wallet providers, the merchants, and potentially more participants in the payments processing chain. With this in mind, please provide comments on the following questions:

    • Is there a range of levels and types of privacy that could be offered in a digital pound ecosystem that remains within the principles set out in the Consultation Paper?
    • If so, what are the advantages and disadvantages of different options to the full range of actors in a digital pound ecosystem?
    • How and where do existing legal and regulatory safeguards pose a challenge to different levels of privacy?
    • How much and what kind of information should users have about how their data is used in a digital pound ecosystem, and what impact will this have on merchants and other participants processing payments?
    • What are the main considerations for the introduction of tiered wallets, enabling consumers to choose different levels of privacy depending on access to services?

Previous working groups

  • What are the use cases for offline payments and how would that influence design of the digital pound?

    • What constitutes an offline payment and is it feasible to implement offline payments in CBDC?
    • What risks would offline payment create and how can those be mitigated?
    • How could offline payment functionality improve financial inclusion?
    • What are other use cases for CBDC offline payments?
    • As part of digital pound design, should offline payments functionality be developed as part of the core offering, developed as an overlay service, or not included?

  • What would merchants need from a digital pound design?

    • What are the range of factors that would influence whether merchants accept digital pound payments alongside other payment methods?
    • What are the options for enabling in-store acceptance of digital pounds (eg existing POS devices, QR codes) and what are their relative advantages or disadvantages?
    • What are the requirements for enabling e-commerce acceptance of digital pounds?
    • What account functionality would help merchants to manage any corporate limits on digital pound holdings?
    • What issues might arise from digital pounds for retailers’ day-to-day payments and cash treasury management, and how might those be addressed?
    • What are the potential scenarios for retailers running their own PIP or ESIP services?

Technical publications

Design notes

Design notes set out the Bank’s emerging thinking on specific topics related to a digital pound. These notes explore matters we are considering during the design phase for a digital pound, on which we wish to give stakeholders visibility of our emerging thinking.

The blueprint framework sets out the aims, scope and focus areas of the digital pound blueprint.

Project reports

Project reports outline experiments or research studies the Bank has undertaken during the design phase.

This joint research, conducted in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative, studied the possible application of privacy-enhancing technologies to a potential digital pound.

The purpose of this experiment was to assess the technical feasibility of using existing point-of-sale (POS) hardware, as currently used in the UK, to initiate digital pound payments.

Our forums

The work we are doing is supported by the following forums and groups:

We created the Academic Advisory Group to generate academic input and promote interdisciplinary discussions on a range of topics related to retail CBDC. 

The CBDC Engagement Forum looks at all aspects of a central bank digital currency apart from the technology it might use. The forum’s members are senior leaders from financial institutions, civil society groups and merchants, among others.

The CBDC Technology Forum looks at the technology a central bank digital currency might use. It enables us to involve people with a wide range of expertise and perspectives. This helps us to understand the technological challenges of a designing, implementing and operating a CBDC. 

 

Digital Pound Taskforce

The Chancellor announced the Digital Pound Taskforce (known then as the CBDC Taskforce) as part of the April 2021 Fintech week. This Taskforce brings together HM Treasury and the Bank of England, to coordinate the exploration of a potential UK CBDC. The Taskforce was involved in the Consultation Paper published in February 2023 and the response in January 2024. The Taskforce continues to oversee the Bank of England and HM Treasury during the design phase for a digital pound. 

Digital Pound Taskforce terms of reference

What's happened

January 2025

December 2024

May 2024

January 2024

October 2023

August 2023

February 2023

March 2022

June 2021

April 2021

October 2020

March 2020

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This page was last updated 15 January 2025