With Brexit behind, the United Kingdom is moving forward to the new challenges, as the UK’s central bank’s governor revealed considerations on creating a digital pound.
Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, which is the central bank of the UK, told this Monday the country is considering to launch a Great Britain’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
In his webinar talk with students, the governor declared that creating a digital pound could play a major role in the financial development of the post-Brexit society, according to the report in Bloomberg:
We are looking at the question of, should we create a Bank of England digital currency. We'll go on looking at it, as it does have huge implications on the nature of payments and society.
Bailey further admitted that creating a digital pound would be “a very big issue” and expressed his expectations for a few year’s timeframes to implement the release of Great Britain’s CBDC. “I think in a few year’s time, we will be heading towards some sort of digital currency”, he added.
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A CBDC will act as an electronic form of central bank-issued fiat money that could be “used by households and businesses to make payments”, claims the official bank statement.
Great Britain’s positive attitude towards digital currencies comes at a time when numbers of central banks across the globe discuss or already develop the creation of their national digital currencies.
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The Bank of England is as well one of the central banks, that have teamed up to share the experience of assessing potencial case of digital currencies in their hove jurisdictions. The group includes monetary authorities form the UK, Canada, Japan, Sweden, and Switzerland, also including the European Central Bank and Bank of International Settlements.
Great Britain is not the only European country to consider the development of digital fiat currencies. The European Union member countries like France, Italy, the Netherlands have already joined forces in an experimental program of creating a digital euro. Meanwhile, Sweden is also preparing to become a cashless country by launching a year-long pilot project of its digital krona.
Furthermore, earlier this month the Bank of Japan has informed about the start of experiments towards the development of digital yen, the digital equivalent to Japan’s national currency. The local government further included the development of the state-backed CBDC into an official economic plan.
Japan is taking steps towards the implementation of national CBDC following China’s completion of its digital yuan’s backend architecture development. As DailyCoin previously informed, China’s Central Bank Digital Currency is in its testing phase, which includes both local and international companies.
China’s central bank has been developing local digital currency for over a few years already. Although it is not clear yet when the digital yuan will be officially released, it is yet the most advanced CBDC in terms of development and might be the world’s first state-backed digital currency ever launched.
