The Bank of England is considering shelving its digital pound plan and instead looking to private tokenization innovation.

CoinFeed reported on May 2nd, citing Bloomberg, that the UK Treasury and the Bank of England are discussing slowing down the "Britcoin" digital pound project. The originally planned "go forward or halt" decision this summer may be changed to a temporary suspension. The report states that regulators want to first observe the progress of banks in areas such as tokenized deposits. These private innovations could potentially achieve some of the fast, low-cost payment functions similar to CBDCs or stablecoins within the existing regulatory framework. The digital pound is currently nearing the end of its design phase, but it faces questions from the public, Parliament, and some officials regarding privacy, necessity, and its impact on the commercial banking system. Internal research at the Bank of England also shows that the marginal benefits of launching a retail CBDC are declining as digital payment methods improve.