The Bank of England (BoE) said that the design of the country’s future national digital currency of the country’s central bank will be based on the conditions of anonymous and confidential use.

Discussions about plans to develop a digital pound (CBDC), dubbed Britcoin, were first initiated by the Bank of England and the UK Treasury in April 2021. Later, in February 2023, the central bank issued a consultation paper outlining the future design of the digital pound and formed an ad hoc working group.

Summing up the preliminary results of the work of this group, BoE Director of Financial Technology Development Tom Mutton told reporters that the digital pound ecosystem will not collect personal information.

“The Bank of England will know the total amount of transactions, but it will not have data on the people who made them. Whereas the wallet provider will have user data but will not have access to transaction data,” Mutton said.

The official assured that neither the Bank of England, nor the government, nor digital wallet providers will have full access to any personal data that allows you to identify the user of the digital pound and match financial transactions. In special cases, digital wallet providers will need to obtain specific user permission to store certain data.

Earlier speaking at the Financial Times Digital Assets Conference, Tom Matton told attendees that the central bank is not looking to make the digital pound completely anonymous as the UK has a very high rate of financial crime.