Von Ralf Keuper

Wie kann der Schutz der Pri­vat­sphä­re der Men­schen gewähr­leis­tet wer­den, wenn dem­nächst Digi­ta­les Zen­tral­bank­geld, wie ein Digi­ta­ler Euro, im Ein­satz ist? Die­ser Fra­ge geht die Bank of Eng­land in dem Dis­kus­si­ons­pa­pier Cen­tral Bank Digi­tal Cur­ren­cy. Oppor­tu­ni­ties, chal­lenges and design nach.

A CBDC pay­ment sys­tem would need to be com­pli­ant with AML and CFT regu­la­ti­ons and requi­re­ments. This means the iden­ti­ty of CBDC users would need to be known to at least some aut­ho­ri­ty or insti­tu­ti­on in the wider CBDC net­work who can vali­da­te the legi­ti­ma­cy of their tran­sac­tion. In the plat­form model, one pos­si­bi­li­ty is that the core led­ger only stores pseud­ony­mous accounts and balan­ces, but that each account in the core led­ger is lin­ked to a Pay­ment Inter­face Pro­vi­der who knows the iden­ti­ty of each user. Pay­ment Inter­face Pro­vi­ders would be respon­si­ble for app­ly­ing AML checks to users, and for report­ing sus­pi­cious tran­sac­tions to the authorities.

This arran­ge­ment means that the Bank would not hold gra­nu­lar per­so­nal data on any user, redu­cing the pri­va­cy con­cerns that could ari­se in con­nec­tion with hol­ding per­so­nal user data, but AML requi­re­ments could still be met by the CBDC sys­tem as a whole.

Die Zustän­dig­keit für die Veri­fi­zie­rung der Nut­zer läge bei den Pay­ment Inter­face Pro­vi­dern. Wei­te­re Rol­len­mo­del­le sind denkbar.

AML respon­si­bi­li­ties could be hand­led enti­re­ly by the Pay­ment Inter­face Pro­vi­ders. Howe­ver, it is also pos­si­ble that new busi­ness models could emer­ge with dedi­ca­ted firms that veri­fy users’ iden­ti­ty and use new tech­ni­ques to iden­ti­fy sus­pi­cious acti­vi­ty. The field of digi­tal iden­ti­ty is curr­ent­ly expe­ri­en­cing signi­fi­cant deve­lo­p­ments. The­r­e­fo­re, the cur­rent model, whe­re pay­ment pro­vi­ders app­ly AML using their own sys­tems, does not have to be the only model in use if CBDC is even­tual­ly introduced.

Cross­post von Iden­ti­ty Economy