Response to the digital pound Technology Working Paper

Published on 25 January 2024

Executive summary

In February 2023, the Bank of England (the Bank) and His Majesty’s Treasury (HM Treasury) published a Consultation Paper on the digital pound. The Consultation Paper explained that the Bank and HM Treasury judged it likely that a digital pound would be needed in the future, and so further preparatory work was justified.

The Consultation Paper was accompanied by a Technology Working Paper which set out a high-level approach to technology design considerations and proposed an illustrative conceptual technology model for a digital pound. It sought to generate feedback and challenge that could inform the Bank’s work during the design phase.

This paper sets out a summary of responses to the Technology Working Paper. The Bank received 391 responses from both individuals and organisations (Annex). We are grateful for the feedback received and have used it to shape the workplan for the design phase.

Summary of feedback to the Technology Working Paper

There was broad support for the six technology design considerations set out in the Technology Working Paper.

There was broad support for the six technology design considerations – privacy, security, resilience, performance, extensibility and energy usage. Respondents also suggested additional considerations, such as interoperability, usability, accessibility and scalability. Some of these were already discussed in the Technology Working Paper but were not identified as key design considerations. The Bank and HM Treasury have agreed a set of design principles which take account of this feedback (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Design principles for a digital pound