The fintech company Ripple has become a co-founder of the nonprofit Digital Pound Foundation, a body aimed at facilitating the design and deployment of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United Kingdom.
Apart from Ripple, co-founders and affiliated members of the foundation include Accenture, CGI Group, the blockchain developer Billon Group, and crypto projects Avalanche, Electroneum and Quant.
The organisation is led by Jeremy Wilson, the former vice-chairman of Barclays and director of Nedbank Private Wealth International.
Ripple’s representative on the Digital Pound Foundation’s board is the company’s Head of Policy, Susan Friedman.
“The Foundation will draw on the knowledge and experience of its members to conduct research, practical tests, and multi-stakeholder collaboration in the design, development, deployment and rollout of the digital pound as a means of ensuring the United Kingdom’s place in the evolving digital financial landscape,” the press release said.
They cite results from the Bank for International Settlements survey showing that 10% of central banks representing 20% of the world’s population are likely to issue digital currencies within the next three years.
In April 2021, the Bank of England and His Majesty’s Treasury formed a CBDC working group.
In September, the departments created two forums with participation from Visa, Mastercard, SWIFT, PayPal, Google and others to study various aspects of launching the digital pound.
Earlier this year, Ripple said they were considering using the XRP Ledger as the basis for a CBDC “with various central banks around the world.”
Later the company announced testing a private version of its distributed ledger designed for these purposes.
In September, Ripple became a partner of the Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan for a pilot test of the national digital currency.