Fabio Panetta’s article (“Central banks must evolve for the era of digital currencies”, Markets Insight, November 19) makes the case for central bank digital currencies (CBDC).
At a community level we need to deploy digital cash in the financial care of vulnerable people in the UK. With all the accounting involved, it takes too long to get money from the Department for Work and Pensions into the vulnerable person’s account.
In this context we should think of the DWP as the digital cash banker with the vulnerable person having a digital cash account. Care services and approved suppliers such as care homes would have digital cash accounts which would allow them to be paid for the services supplied to the vulnerable person.
Accounting to and scrutiny by the Office of the Public Guardian would be faster and easier.
The concept is less grand than providing the whole population with digital cash but it’s more urgent, simpler to deploy and would provide a model for the CBDC ecosystem that Panetta envisages.
Paul Ormrod
Founder, Cashfac, London EC3, UK
Letter: Make digital cash for the vulnerable a CBDC model
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