The Bank of England is inviting applications for a “proof of concept” Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) wallet, with a budget of approximately $255,000.
The wallet must possess basic capabilities, such as transacting value and requesting payments.
A proof-of-concept wallet was outlined with certain basic requirements that must be fulfilled, such as enabling a signup process, allowing users to update details, displaying balances and transactions, and providing notifications.
Additionally, the wallet should enable the loading and unloading of a CBDC, request peer-to-peer payments via account ID or QR code, and pay online with businesses.
The goal of this project is to understand the complete customer experience for a CBDC wallet and the needs of both the Bank of England and the private sector.
To do this, a mobile application for iOS and Android, a website for the wallet, an example merchant website and the back-end infrastructure must be created.
The Bank of England has not done any work on a sample CBDC wallet, and will not be designing one either. This project will make the CBDC product more concrete for internal and external stakeholders.
A budget of $244,500 (or 200,000 British pounds) has been allocated to the proof-of-concept project, planned to last for five months, with the BOE evaluating five suppliers. As of now, no applications have been submitted.
