The Bank of England has written to UK banks asking them how ready they are for interest rates of zero or less.
The UK would be following in the footsteps of countries such as Japan and Switzerland if it cut the cost of borrowing to such a low figure.
“We are requesting specific information about your firm’s current readiness,” the bank’s deputy governor, Sam Woods, said in the letter to banks.
Mr Woods said he wanted to know about technological challenges.
The past few years have been marked by outages and other problems with the computer systems of various British banks.