This year, the central bank moved on from the research and exploration phase of its digital pound roadmap to the design phase. The UK has decided that any future CBDC would need to be useful for everyday in-store payments. The BofE has conducted a feasibility study to see whether existing POS systems could be used for this, eliminating the need for merchants to invest in new hardware. The study found that existing POS terminals in the UK could, in principle, be used to initiate online digital pound payments. In addition, the researchers found that it is technically feasible to implement offline payments functionality using existing POS terminals but that machines would require modification. This is because the functionality might require that an offline payments application be deployed to those terminals in order to store offline balances.