According to foreign media reports, on December 12, 2022, the Bank of England (BOE) officially opened applications for the “CBDC sample wallet proof of concept” project tender, with a tender budget range of £200,000. The project period is five months and applications will close on December 23, 2022.
The project outlines simple guidelines that must be implemented for the proof-of-concept wallet, which appears to provide only basic functionality, such as a registration process, a way to update details, display balances and transactions, and display notifications, among other requirements. The wallet also had to demonstrate that it could load and offload funds from commercial banks using CBDC and be able to request peer-to-peer payments by account ID or QR code and could be used to make online payments with businesses.
The key deliverables of the project are the creation of a mobile app for iOS and Android, a wallet website, and a sample merchant website and back-end infrastructure to serve the wallet website and app while storing user data and transaction history.
The list goes on to state that the bank will not develop its own wallet.
In addition, it states that it, “may develop payment scheme rules and user experience guidelines for private sector wallet providers, among other things.”
In addition, the Bank of England is seeking a wallet that will make CBDC “more tangible” to stakeholders. It goes on to note that the prototype developed in response to the application request will “support future exploration and further functionality” as it is developed.
Finally, the application focuses on peer-to-peer and peer-to-bank payment functionality. It states that it wants wallets to request and complete payments “via account ID or QR code.” The project’s £200,000 budget was set along with its allotted five-month timeframe. According to Cointelegraph, the Bank of England plans to evaluate five providers, although no applications have been made as of today.
The ACU Group is equipped with all industry experts with early exposure to digital currencies in the Hong Kong industry and who have developed a dual currency banking system for digital currencies, CBDC and fiat currencies in the early stages, which is currently in beta.
Since the establishment of ACU Group in 2019 to date, ACU Group’s primary business is in FinTech and Blockchain. ACU Group has blockchain technology research centers and digital asset management projects in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Singapore.ACU Group also operates a digital asset trading platform in Thailand. ACU Group has a brand presence in the European Union, the United States, Singapore, South Korea, Brunei, and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The ACU brand trademark is registered in 46 countries and regions, including the European Union, the United States, Singapore, Korea, Brunei, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, the Philippines, Macau SAR, and the United Arab Emirates.
The ACU Group has laid out the upstream, midstream, and downstream industrial chains of blockchain, and its main business covers: the establishment of ACU (a unified digital asset payment ecosystem in Asia); the experiment and application of digital currency in the direction of finance, payment, technology and trade; the research and development of blockchain-related technologies, including blockchain public chain development, lifestyle apps, digital asset exchange and wallet system development, etc.; and the education and training of core talents in the field of blockchain.
