The Digital Pound Consultation Will Drop Thursday, U.K. Official Says

The digital pound consultation is set to drop on Thursday, said James Bowler, permanent secretary of the government’s finance arm, the Treasury, in a meeting on Wednesday.

“The government is proceeding I think with caution,” said Bowler, who holds the most senior rank for his civil service department. “There’s a number of issues around privacy, financial inclusion, whether there’s limits, monetary policy and interest and the consultation is out on that and you’ll hear more about it tomorrow.”

The digital pound consultation opened in February and closed in June last year. At the time, the Bank of England and Treasury said that a digital pound was likely needed.

Since the consultation landed it has received over 50,000 responses. Privacy was one chief concern respondents highlighted.

The Treasury Select Committee, a cross party group tasked with examining the Treasury’s policy decisions, also asked for the government to lower its proposed limit for individual holdings, and for the digital pound to be able to bear interest last month.

“This is about being a modern economy that recognizes how our citizens want to do business but it throws up a number of challenges that you’d want to overcome before you decided to proceed and we are still in that phase of looking at those challenges,” Bowler said.