considered by central banks and governments across the globe. no decisions have been made in the uk and we continue to work closely with a wide range of stakeholders to develop a clear understanding of the potential implications : positive and negative. the bank of england and hm treasury will consult later this year on the assessment of the case for a retail cbdc in the uk, including scope for further work. the central banking spring meetings have included a number of enlightening debates on cbdc. i won ’ t seek to synthesise that, but instead i will focus on how we can make existing forms of digital money work better for businesses and consumers. and by “ we ” i mean not just central banks but the payments ecosystem as a whole. discussions of innovation in payments often focus on retail payments and the whizzy frontends. but i believe that wholesale and high - value payments are at least as important to the global economy, and certainly to central banks in maintaining monetary and financial stability. they are used for example by financial institutions to trade in money markets, by businesses to pay their suppliers and source foreign currency and by the government to issue bonds. high - value 1 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches payments form more than 90 % of the value of electronic payments transmitted in the uk. 2 due to their value and their importance to financial stability, these payments often settle directly at central banks – over £700bn settle in the uk rtgs every working day. this means that central banks can have a strong impact on how these wholesale payments perform and evolve. and there is scope for further evolution. for many types of wholesale payments, inefficiencies continue to exist as an inherent part of the process. market convention for settlement of equity trades still sees them transferred two days after the trade ( t + 2 ). forty percent of foreign exchange transactions worldwide – worth nearly $ 9 trillion every day – are not subject to netting, creating exposures and settlement risk for the market participants. 3 cross - border payments between businesses can take several days, with six out of ten such payments requiring manual intervention to process. new approaches in high - value payments how can we remove the frictions to make more payments more effective? the market is actively innovating to build improved services for consumers. investment in fintech solutions is soaring, with $ 210 billion invested in 2021 globally. payments were the most active area of fintech investment, making up a quarter of the total. 4 new entrants are

, the actual impact that inflation has on individual households can vary quite a lot depending on their consumption patterns and the dynamics of the prices of different goods and services. households that spend a larger proportion of their money on food are more exposed to changes in the price of food, while households that have higher spending on housing feel inflation bite harder when energy prices rise. studies show that households on lower incomes are generally more exposed to the problems caused by high inflation than those with higher incomes. the difference between the levels of inflation experienced by different groups in society was not that large when inflation was low, amounting to about one quarter of a percentage point as shown by the ecb's research1. the gap between the inflation rates for households on higher and lower incomes had widened in the euro area though to 1. 9 percentage points by september 2022. calculations for january 2023 by the bruegel 2 think tank indicate that it had reached two or three percentage points in many european countries, and as much as five or even seven in countries where inflation was 20 %. such differences can aggravate inequality and have substantial distributional effects. it is low - income households that face higher rates of inflation, but they typically have smaller financial buffers and hold their savings on bank accounts with low interest rates, which are less protected against inflation. this makes it vital that governments target their support measures as accurately as possible. 3 / 8 bis - central bankers'speeches the consequences of high inflation for public finances high inflation also affects the public finances, as the relationship works through numerous channels and in both directions3. some of those channels are direct consequences of policy measures to alleviate the impact of high inflation, especially higher energy prices. bruegel estimates4 that countries in the european union allocated a total of 657 billion euros to cutting energy taxes and supporting households and firms between september 2021 and january 2023. this amounts to 4. 5 per cent of gdp for 2021, a sizeable amount of extraordinary spending indeed. some countries have raised additional revenues to cover this by introducing windfall taxes on energy companies5. one positive side effect of higher inflation is that it reduces the ratio of government debt to gdp because nominal gdp grows fast. this good news has been offset though by the sharp rise in interest rates over the past year, and the most likely net effect is that interest payments on government debt will be higher in the years to come6. inflation affects the fiscal balance through both revenues and spending and there are both