The Bank of England (BoE) has moved closer to launching its central bank digital currency (CBDC), known as the “Britcoin.”
The move follows the success and the close of the major trial study, Project Rosalind, carried out in collaboration between the BoE and the foreign exchange firm, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
The study investigated the implementation of an application programming interface (API) in everyday transactions with digital currencies.
Both firms jointly explored the ideals of using an API to support retail CBDC transactions; resulting in cheaper peer-to-peer payments while uncovering new financial products to combat and eliminate illicit activities.
During the project, around 33 API functionalities were examined and then generated. However, 30 retail CBDC cases were under inspection.
As a result of multiple API functionalities available and the in-depth exploration of several use cases for a CBDC, the launch of the Britcoin CBDC could commence sooner than expected.
“The project also experimented with and provided valuable lessons on many key aspects of a retail CBDC system, such as API design, privacy models, security, standards, offline payments, private sector programmability, and ecosystem roles and responsibilities,” said BIS.
Although critics have scrutinized the notion of a CBDC’s programmability, the study suggested that a well-designed API layer can give central banks the means to interact with the private sector to adopt the benefits of CBDC payments.
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