Blockchain finance firm Quant has announced its role as part of the Bank of England’s ‘Project Rosalind’ team in the exploration of how application programming can be used for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Project Rosalind – also delivered with help from the BIS Innovation Hub London Centre – has already begun testing on APIs and how they can facilitate CBDC retail payments as well as other use cases.
The project also looks specifically at the public-private sector collaboration model, with the public sector analysed to gain more core infrastructure, and the private sector more consumer-facing applications.
Already providing real-time assessments, the project has proven that APIs can play a key role in enabling a British CBDC – also known as ‘Britcoin’ – to help deliver a range of payment benefits and security measures.
Gilbert Verdian, Founder and CEO at Quant, commented on his firm’s involvement: “The Bank of England and BIS chose Quant to provide the technology for Project Rosalind because of our history of innovation, expertise in financial services and deep experience in payments, previously running mission critical infrastructure – only we can do what the project needed from a technology partner and payments expert.
“Our expertise drove the project and we helped to shape the boundaries of what’s possible for a CBDC. We’re incredibly proud to have been recognised as a valuable partner in the CBDC space.”
The hope of digitising the UK’s future economy is one of the fundamental beliefs of Project Rosalind, bolstered by finding multiple benefits such as the beginnings of compatible APIs to support further innovation.
Additionally, Verdian highlights that CBDCs can become a vital tool to combating fraud, as the technology is able to meet the demands of the ever-changing methods of fraudsters.
“CBDCs present an opportunity to embed fraud protection at the network level and provide a holistic view of transactions to better spot patterns of fraudulent behaviour.
CBDCs have logic and can embed fraud checks into the transaction; this means that if you make a payment, the currency will assess the transaction and the recipient before the money moves providing the ability to have a higher baseline level of fraud protection at the network level – rather than moving the money immediately and then you realise you’ve been scammed
“CBDCs are designed to co-exist with the traditional money system, but I predict that people will move to CBDCs out of preference; once people experience the ease of CBDCs, and switch to the wave of new innovative banking applications and products powered by CBDCs, the friction, limitations and pain points of the traditional system will be too obvious to ignore.”
To learn more about CBDCs and how they have become so prevalent, click here and here
