Positive Money has published a report:
DIGITAL CASH: WHY CENTRAL BANKS START ISSUING ELECTRONIC MONEY
If you are interested and listening to and/or joining in a discussion about this subject please come to Southampton Solent University room LT2 on 23th May 2018 at 7:00 pm. A free event.
David Clarke is heading up Positive Money’s campaign on digital and physical currency. He will be leading this talk and discussion.
With the impending ‘death of cash’ and the rise of digital currencies (such as Bitcoin), there are strong arguments for central banks to start issuing “digital cash” – an electronic version of notes and coins (also known as a central bank digital currency). But this raises a number of questions: how would central banks get new digital cash into the economy, and how would the public use it? What would the advantages be? And would there be any impact – positive or negative – on financial stability?
The Bank of England has already posed questions about the potential of digital cash, or ‘central bank digital currency’, prompted by the ongoing rise of electronic means of payment, and the emergence of alternative currencies such as Bitcoin. One of the key questions to come out of the Bank’s One Bank Reserve Agenda, released in early 2015, was “From a monetary and financial stability point of view, what are the costs and benefits of making a new form of central bank money accessible to a wide range of holders?”
We argue that there are a significant number of benefits to issuing digital cash:
• It widens the range of options for monetary policy
• It can make the financial system safer
• It can encourage competition and innovation in the payment systems
• It can recapture a portion of seigniorage and address the decline of physical cash
• It can help address the implications of alternative finance upon money creation and distribution
• It can improve financial inclusion
For more information about The Positive Money point of view and access to the report, please go to:
http://positivemoney.org/publications/digital-cash/ 
