Plans to develop a digital pound (CBDC), dubbed Britcoin, were first initiated by the Bank of England and the U.K. Treasury Department in April 2021.. Later in February 2023, the central bank released a consultation document outlining the future design of the digital pound and formed a special working group.
Summarizing the preliminary results of the group’s work, Tom Mutton, BoE’s director of financial technology development, told reporters that the digital pound ecosystem will not collect personal information.
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“The Bank of England will know the total amount of transactions, but it will not have data about the people who made them. Whereas the wallet provider will have user data, but will not have access to transaction data,” Matton said.
The official assured that neither the Bank of England, the government nor digital wallet providers will have exhaustive access to any personal data to identify the digital pound user and match financial transactions. In special cases, digital wallet providers will need to get special permission from the user to store certain data.
Earlier, speaking
on digital assets at the Financial Times Tom Matton told attendees that the central bank is not seeking to make the digital pound completely anonymous because the UK has a very high rate of financial crime.