https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/paper/2023...
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Update 2: see nr’s comment below.
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Update 1: my guess would be that private money (think Venmo) and crypto have a chance to win over commercial bank money (think bank accounts and transfers) for the general public, and the government thinks it’s a potential threat (probably wisely IMO).
God knows why the bank industry doesn’t have its shit together, but even in the EU I’ve come to feel suspicious towards bank transfers. Maybe a transfer will take five seconds, maybe one day, maybe a week with no explanation why. Bank apps, even modern ones (N26 etc) are still somewhat meh.
The part of my brain that thinks “ought” a lot is screaming “no, everyone ought to use bank transfers and they ought to be good”… but objectively they are a hit and miss.
A CBDC is at least going to be stored in a single database, so maybe it’ll be working a bit better.