Posted on the UK Government's Digital Marketplace, the central bank is offering a £200,000 contract to successful bidders for the five-month project.

Key deliverables include the development of a mobile wallet app, wallet and merchant website and a back-end server to serve mobile app and website, call the core ledger API and store user data and transaction history.

In terms of functionality, the Wallet should incorporate a signup process, a way to update details, and to display balances, transactions and notifications. Other specifications include the ability to request P2P payments through an account ID or QR code and the means for online business payments.

While the central bank does not intend to build its own wallet, it says the aim of the project is to make the CBDC concept more tangible for stakeholders and to use as a prototype for future user testing.

It will also support the Bank’s work towards the BIS Innovation Hub’s ‘Project Rosalind’, by testing integration of a front-end with the Rosalind API. This project is based on a model where CBDC will be issued by a central bank and distributed through user-facing applications provided by payments interface providers (PIPs), mostly from the private sector. For this model to work, an API is needed to act as a platform to connect a central bank core ledger with PIPs.  

The BofE team that will be interacting with the wallet project consists of a Principal Architect, a Solution Architect, a Functional Manager, Project Analyst & Technical Writer.

The supplier's team is expected to carry out all the project work but have regular progress and design meetings with the CBDC technology team to monitor and guide the project. The technology team will also be expected to deploy the developed demonstrations on Bank infrastructure.