Payments Platform Nuggets Working With Bank of England on Privacy Layer for Digital Pound

Payments platform Nuggets is working with the Bank of England to develop a privacy and identity layer for a potential digital pound, according to a press release on Wednesday.

The platform, which enables decentralized identity, plans to design a private and secure system to prevent the tracking and correlation of transactions, as well as prevent fraud and money laundering.

The Bank of England (BoE) launched its consultation on a central bank digital currency in February, and said then that a digital pound was likely needed but that it would not make a decision on issuing one until at least 2025. Digital pound privacy is a topic that has been raised by lawmakers in the past.

Nuggets said that it plans to implement zero-knowledge proofs on its privacy layer, which will enable people to verify their identity without sharing their data.

Alastair Johnson is the founder and CEO of Nuggets, which he started in 2016 with co-founder Seema Khinda Johnson. Nuggets initially worked with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and the BoE on a project to connect monetary authorities and the private sector to facilitate retail digital currency payments called Project Rosalind. Off the back of that work, Nuggets was asked by the BoE to investigate and design the privacy layer for the digital pound, a company spokesperson said.

Read more: UK Will Need New Laws to Accommodate Future Digital Pound, Lawyers Say

Update(July 5 15:20 UTC): Adds Nuggets background in the last paragraph.