Submit your questions and ideas now for Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden
Our Deputy Governor Dave Ramsden will be answering your questions on all things money on 14 November at 13:30.
Submit your own ideas under the Money, Money, Money section and post your questions in the comment section below. He will answer as many as possible during the session and looks forward to chatting with you all.
edited on Nov 9, 2018 by Michelle (BoE Moderator)
Robert Taggart 3 months ago
Does the BoE want Blighty to become an essentially cashless society? and, if it does, what influence or even pressure can it bring about on those companies who are dragging their heels?? (surely the handling of physical cash is more problematical than the processing of data? - could this not be reflected in some kind of penalty for the use of cash in the future??).
Believing CBDC 3 months ago
What is your opinion on the necessity to offer a digital cash (or CBDC) to the general public? Noting that all digital payments today are operated by for profit commercial agents, do you see the need to offer the general public a more secure, more private, and more reliable mean for digital payments in our new digitalizing world? Thank you!
Robert Thornton-Kaye 3 months ago
Cashless transactions provide an excellent opportunity to automatically generate a pdf or other unmodifiable trail to identify where money is coming from and going to. This would be of enormous benefit in combating fraud and the use of dark money in politics. It would also be of great help in reducing mugging, tax evasion/avoidance and organised crime. Would the Bank of England be interested in pursuing this possibility?
Robert Thornton-Kaye 3 months ago
Apologies for the double post. There's no option to delete your posts here. My 2nd question is, given the enormous negative impact on the British economy predicted to be caused by Brexit, will the Bank of England be joining the long list of businesses and politicians calling for a 2nd democratic consultation, aka the people's vote?
Sudip Chattopadhyaya 3 months ago
It is evident that we are moving towards a cashless society in Europe. In Sweden, less than 1% of the of the value of all payments were made using cash in 2017. Riksbank figures reveal that the average value of Swedish krona in circulation fell from around 106 billion (£10bn) in 2009 to 65 billion (£6bn) in 2016. In the UK, the trend in banknote in circulation is opposite : from 3.4 billion BoE Notes worth about 64 billion pounds in 2016 it grew to 3.6 billion BoE notes worth about 70 billion pounds.
The UK's payment markets tend to evolve slowly over time as we are creatures of habit when it comes to the methods we use to make and receive payments. In 2017, debit cards overtook cash for the first time as most frequently used payment method in the UK mainly due to the growing popularity of contactless payments. Despite the falling volume of cash payments (decline of 15% in 2017), it was still used for over a third (34%) of all payments in 2017. The use of cash as a % of all payments has halved in the last decade from 61% in 2007 to 34% in 2017.
In light of the above, find below my questions :
1. In your opinion, how are you going to combat the impact of cashless society upon the vulnerable sections of the population : the elderly, people without bank accounts who will feel further disenfranchised from the cash infrastructure that previously supported them, former convicts, immigrants? Given the fact that the UK household deficit is around £25bn and the unsecured credit has increased to a record level of £205bn, do you estimate that there is any correlation between payments habit in cash encouraging self-control while paying by card or mobile phone which could encourage further spending?
2. What are the initiatives of BoE to manage and mitigate the increasing risks of centralised payment networks crashing or being hit by cyber terrorism impacting the ability of millions of consumers to transact and pay to acquire basic services on a daily basis? Do you effectively supervise the volume and frequency in which the cash machines are being shut down by the banks in the UK so as to minimise this risk?
3. In 2016, the Indian government banned 500 and 1,000 rupee notes in an effort to demonetize purportedly with a view to crackdown the criminals of money laundering. This move was criticised as the implementation being rushed and controversial, and roughly 99% of those banknotes were deposited. The downstream impact on the consumers were significant disrupting the payment abilities of millions of citizens who were outside the traditional infrastructure of banking.
In your opinion, do you think the principal reasons to encourage restrictions on payments in cash or drive towards a cashless society are "to crack down on the minority who use cash to evade tax and launder money"? (HM Treasury Call for Evidence : Cash and digital payments in the new economy; March 2018)
4. How do you respond to the following arguments :
- Paying in cash is an essential personal freedom.
- Restrictions on payments in cash could distort competition or create obstacles to
trade in the internal market?
Thanks for your time and attention.
Best regards.
James Manson 3 months ago
Could you please shed some light on the Bank of England's strategy with regards to the ECB's "TIPS" protocol going live at the end of this month, please? See link below for more details....
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/target/tips/html/index.en.html …
Are we (the U.K.) to be left behind, while the EU's economy flourishes under the ILP's success?
If not, then when should we expect the U.K's own CHAPS update/incorporation/interoperability onto the ILP?
We all know that a no deal Brexit is on the horizon, so the U.K's access to TIPS/SEPA etc will no doubt be adversely affected.
Any thoughtful input/reassurance would be greatly appreciated.
m__doon 3 months ago
Under an assumption that commercial-bank money will almost completely dominate the retail payments landscape in let's say ten years from now - what do you think central bank balance sheets will look like when there are so few bank notes required? What do you think will happen to the concept of seignorage? And how do you see such a scenario impacting the frameworks of central banks with mandatory reserve requirements? Thanks!
Ramblingsofabard 3 months ago
There are several groups raising concerns that the big shift to cashless society is actually a way for the government and big corporations to monitor consumers better and have full surveillance on their spending and earnings. What is the BoE response to that? And while intentions maybe innocuous, a fully digitised payments world does present an opportunity for misuse from an authoritarian regime to exploit individual privacy. What measures can be introduced to allow a move towards the modern way of payments without comprising privacy?
Simon Youel 3 months ago
Given that QE served to massively inflate the wealth of the asset-rich, wouldn’t it be better for future stimulus to be designed in a way which has a far more equitable distributional impact? Wouldn’t policies like ‘helicopter money’, in which each citizen receives an equal amount of newly created money regardless of their asset wealth, be a much fairer, more democratic and more sustainable means of boosting the economy than relying on QE to further inflate asset bubbles?
Simon Youel 3 months ago
As access to physical cash declines shouldn’t the Bank of England provide the public with the option to access digital cash through accounts at the central bank, rather than being forced to rely on private banks who thus receive tens of billions of pounds worth of implicit subsidies each year through deposit protection and seigniorage?
Dave Ramsden 3 months ago
Hello! Looking forward to responding to your questions on Money, Money, Money - I will get to as many as I can. To get me primed for this session, I have been taking part in the cash vs. cashless challenge. I'm interested to hear how you found it and I'll be posting about my experience on that page later.
Nadya Petrof 3 months ago
Do I leave more money in my pocket, if I choose to payout my mortgage with cash, (assuming the BOE sticks to 1 hike per year policy)?
Ian Collier 3 months ago
It may be some years before we as a nation go totally cashless, but as a warning, when events happen, they tend to happen quickly.
De-cashing (the reduced use of cash) is happening and will continue to happen, probably at a rapid rate.
What is the Bank proposing to do to help those who find it difficult to understand and utilise non-cash payments. With less cash usage, the unit cost of providing cash will surely rise and unless there is a subsidy by those handling cash, those currently disadvantaged and financially excluded will only dee their positions deteriorate.
I believe that the Bank and government should be planning for this and help those currently disadvanged from being further disadvantaged. What are you planning to do?
Amy Buckingham 1 month ago
This idea has been advanced to the current phase