Public servants in the UK are largely unfamiliar with blockchain technology and see little use for it in the current financial system, suggests a recently published survey.
The UK Public Sector Fintech and AI Awareness Study, undertaken by research body Global Government Fintech, found that anti-fraud and digital ID are considered the most important fintech developments for the UK public sector.
These were followed by payments innovation, green finance and procurement and supplier innovation.
However, cutting edge technology that has garnered a lot of attention within the fintech world has apparently had less impact among the UK's public servants.
Application programming interfaces (API) integration, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain/DLT were considered as the least important developments by the 287 respondees.
Fraud is a popular subject within the pubic sector, given that it loses billions annually through tax evasion, procurement fraud and benefits fraud and the givernment has set out a four year plan, the Counter Fraud Functional Strategy 2024-2027, to address it.
Similarly, digital ID is a government priority with work led by the Office for Digital identities and Attrributes. Meanwhile payments innovation is seen as a key ingredient for open banking to succeed in the UK.
Consequently, when asked to rank their familiarity with certain fintech themes, fraud, digital ID and payments all featured highly.
In contrast, central bank digital currencies and blockchain/DLT scored the highest number of 'not at all familiar' answers. This is despite a number of trade bodies writing to the UK's prime minister in April to ask the government to launch a "crypto and blockchain push" throughout the country