Bank of England’s Carney says there is clearly a future for digital payments, even if true digital currencies may still be a way off

• Bank of England Governor Carney acknowledges digital currencies, but says they are still a way off.
• He further pointed out flaws of Bitcoin, suggesting that it is slower and more expensive versus GBP.

Mark Carney via the Bank of England’s future forum, was questioned recently on when will the BoE begin issuance of digital cash. He initially covered how important physical money is in society still today. Saying, “we accept that the token of exchange that we call money can be physical - made of metal or polymer - or digital, made of computer code. And indeed, physical cash still plays a very important role in our society. There were 13bn cash payments in 2017, accounting for a third of the total volume of consumer and business payments. That’s why we are still committed to physical money and announced the launch of our new polymer £50 note last year.”

Carney did accept however that the Bank of England must also keep pace with changes in the economy. Somewhat of a hint in further monitoring the development of digital currencies. He detailed, “there is clearly a future for digital payments, even if true digital currencies may still be a way off”.

On that note, in another response to a question via the forum, he highlighted specially for the UK, that Crypto is also an inefficient media of exchange. “No major high street or online retailer accepts Bitcoin as payment in the UK”. Further pointing out flaws of Bitcoin, Carney said, “the speed and cost of the transaction is slower and more expensive than payments in sterling. For example, Visa can process up to 65,000 transactions per second globally against just 7 per second for Bitcoin”.