The Bank of England and HM Treasury have joined the central bank digital currency (CBDC) Engagement and Technology Forums. The Forums were created earlier this year alongside a task force exploring a digital pound sterling. CBDCs have emerged as a hot policy issue in the Fintech space as advocates foresee streamlined payments and transfer ecosystem while some worry about the implications of a digital currency in regards to monetary policy, commercial banking, and privacy concerns.
The Engagement Forum consists of stakeholders from industry, civil society, and academia to gather strategic input on policy considerations and functional requirements pertaining to CBDC. The Forum is said to play an important role in helping the Bank and HM Treasury understand the practical challenges of designing, implementing and operating a CBDC.
The Technology Forum met for the first time in late September, while the Engagement Forum will have its inaugural meeting later in the year. Agendas and Minutes from meetings are expected to be published regularly.
The current members of the CBDC Forums are listed below:
- Anne Boden, CEO, Starling Bank
- Georges Elhedery, Co-CEO Global Banking & Markets, HSBC
- Arun Kohli, COO EMEA, Morgan Stanley
- Tracey McDermott, Group Head of Conduct & Financial Crime, Standard Chartered Bank
- Chris Rhodes, CFO, Nationwide Building Society
- Paul Thwaite, CEO Commercial Banking, NatWest Group
- Stephen Gilderdale, Chief Product Officer, SWIFT
- Imran Gulamhuseinwala, Trustee, Open Banking
- Charlotte Hogg, CEO, Visa Europe
- Matthew Hunt, Interim CEO, PayUK
- Jorn Lambert, Chief Digital Officer, Mastercard
- Paul Bances, Head of Global Market Development of Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, and Digital Currencies, PayPal
- Simon Coles, CTO, PayPoint
- Diana Layfield, President of EMEA Partnerships, Google
- Andrew Cregan, Head of Finance Policy, British Retail Consortium
- Martin McTague, National Policy Chair, Federation of Small Businesses
- Andrew Murphy, Executive Director for Operations, John Lewis Partnership
- Chris Wilford, Head of Financial Services Policy, CBI
- Natasha de Terán, Member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel
- Simon Gaysford, Founder & Director, Frontier Economics
- Reema Patel, Associate Director, Ada Lovelace Institute
- Polly Tolley, Director of Impact, Citizens Advice Scotland
- Judith Tyson, Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute
- Christian Catalini, Chief Economist, Diem Association
- Jess Houlgrave, Chief of Staff, Checkout.com
- Arunan Tharmarajah, Head of European Banking, Wise
- Adam Jackson, Director, Innovate Finance
- Jana Mackintosh, Managing Director Payments & Innovation, UK Finance
- Ruth Wandhöfer, Chair, PSR Panel
- Bryan Zhang, Executive Director, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the University of Cambridge Judge Business School
- Rodney Garratt, Professor of Economics, University of California Santa Barbara
- Simon Gleeson, Financial Regulatory Group Lead, Clifford Chance
Members of the CBDC Technology Forum
- Dominic Black, Money Collective Tech Lead, Monzo
- Lee Braine, MD Research & Engineering, Barclays
- Alan Ainsworth, Head of Policy, Open Banking Implementation Entity
- Max Malcolm, Head of Solution Architecture, Visa
- Sean Mullaney, Head of Product & Engineering for EMEA Payments, Stripe
- Patrick O’Donnell, VP Blockchain & Digital Assets, Mastercard
- James Whittle, Director of Standards and Architecture, PayUK
- Edwin Aoki, CTO, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Digital Currencies, PayPal
- Will Drewry, Principal Software Engineer, Google
- David MacKeith, Principal Technology Advisor, Amazon Web Services
- Lauren Del Giudice, Senior Architect, Idemia
- Vikram Kimyani, Cloud Architect, Oracle
- Paul Lucas, Distinguished Engineer, IBM
- Michael Adams, CEO, Quali-Sign
- Richard Brown, CTO, R3
- Josh Daniel, Director Payments, SETL
- Bejoy Das Gupta, Chief Economist, eCurrency
- Andrew Flatt, CTO, Archax
- Inga Mullins, CEO, Fluency
- Matthieu Saint Olive, CBDC & Payments Manager, Consensys
- Keith Bear, Fellow, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance
- Geoff Goodell, Senior Research Associate, UCL
- Sarah Meiklejohn, Associate Director, Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3)
- Simon Brayshaw, Head of Technology, ASOS
- Ashley Lannquist, Project Lead, Blockchain & Digital Currency, World Economic Forum
- Mark Shaw, Director of Global Payments Strategy, Spotify