Bank of England Seeks Proof of Concept Wallet For CBDC

• The Bank of England (BOE) advertised a call for proposals on the Digital Marketplace.
• The proof-of-concept was given a budget of £244,500 (around $244,500).

Proof-of-concept for a wallet that may store a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is being sought by the Bank of England (BOE). The Bank of England (BOE) advertised a call for proposals on the Digital Marketplace. A platform for government agencies to offer digital project work, on the 9th of December.

The requirements for the proof-of-concept wallet were rather straightforward. With just the most fundamental features such as a registration procedure, a mechanism to change data, and the display of balances and transactions deemed necessary.

For Internal and External Stakeholders

The wallet must also prove it can be loaded and emptied with a CBDC. Moreover, make requests for P2P payments using an account ID or QR code, and be used to make purchases online.

Project deliverables include an iOS and Android app. Also a wallet website, a merchant website, and the back-end infrastructure needed to service the wallet website and applications and store user data and transaction history.

The Bank of England (BOE) wants to “sharpen functional requirements for both the Bank and private sector.” And make the CBDC product “more tangible for internal and external stakeholders.” Hence the stated goal of this project is to “explore the end-to-end user journey.”

The proof-of-concept was given a budget of £244,500 (around $244,500). Or 200,000 British pounds, with the BOE planning to assess five potential vendors over the course of its five-month duration. As of this writing, there were no submissions.

The BOE’s Project Rosalind, an experiment it is doing with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub to develop prototypes of an API for a CBDC, is bolstered by the sample wallet. There will also be a test implementation of the POC wallet using the Rosalind API.