Eastern Caribbean Central Bank's DCash digital currency goes live

Published at: April 1, 2021

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, the main financial institution of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, has launched DCash.

The ECCB announced the launch of its CBDC for the region via a media event held on Wednesday.

DCash is the digital version of the Eastern Caribbean dollar — the official currency of the eight countries in the union.

However, as announced during the launch, DCash is only available in four of the currency union’s member states: Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Lucia.

Wednesday’s launch marked a culmination of the project over two years in development with the ECCB first announcing its plans for a CBDC back in March 2019.

As part of the launch, ECCB governor Timothy Antoine performed the first-ever live DCash cross-border transaction. Governor Antoine reportedly sent 100 DCash dollars from the ECCB headquarters in St. Kitts to DCash wallet holders in the three other countries involved in the launch.

Using Bitt’s CBDC management protocols, the ECCB will reportedly be able to mint and issue DCash. The ECCB will also be able to redeem and burn the DCash CBDC.

As part of the rollout, the ECCB state that DCash will support both business and private transactions with vendors and merchants signing up for the DCash Merchant App. Users will also be able to transfer DCash to residents within the currency union.

Speaking during the launch on Wednesday, the ECCB governor commented on the central bank’s decision to partner with Bitt for the CBDC project, adding:

“The ECCB chose to partner with Bitt because of the company’s shared values of citizen empowerment through financial inclusion and its respect and understanding of the unique needs of emerging economies. These past two years have been an intensely collaborative journey, and both Bitt and the ECCB have learnt many transferable lessons along the way.”

For Bitt CEO Brian Popelka, DCash is a “game-changer” for the currency union adding that the CBDC was designed to be interoperable with digital currencies around the world.

Following the public rollout, both the ECCB and Bitt say the next step is to work towards full incorporation of DCash into the financial infrastructure of the four nations participating in the initial launch over the next year.

Beyond this point, both partners are also looking to extend DCash to the remaining four countries in the currency union: Montserrat, Commonwealth of Dominica, Anguilla, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

In other Caribbean-related CBDC news, Jamaica’s central bank recently partnered with Ireland-based tech firm eCurrency Mint to develop its own sovereign digital currency.

Tags
Technology
Business
Central Bank
Cbdc
Caribbean
Related Posts
Adapt or die: Payments giants partner with crypto firms to ensure security
Institutional interest for digital assets continues to grow rapidly, demonstrating that cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and nonfungible tokens (NFT) are here to stay. At the same time, traditional financial institutions are beginning to understand the dire need to properly support digital assets. For example, although payments giants such as Mastercard and Visa currently offer crypto-enabled credit and debit cards, these companies are also forming partnerships with crypto organizations to enable better security and trust for consumers transacting with digital currencies. Shedding light on the matter, Ajay Bhalla, president of cyber and intelligence at Mastercard, told Cointelegraph that Mastercard’s customers and other partners …
Adoption / Sept. 21, 2021
OKex embraces Brazil’s official fast payments system PIX, as CBDC draws nearer
Increasing numbers of offshore cryptocurrency exchanges are embracing Brazil’s instant payments infrastructure, PIX. On May 28, OKEx announced a strategic partnership with local payments firm CuboPay, allowing it to facilitate Tether ($USDT) purchases in exchange for Brazilian real via PIX. The news follows similar moves from rival exchanges, including Crypto.com peer-to-peer platform Localbitcoins. The integrations come as the Central Bank of Brazil, or BCB, published preliminary guidelines for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, on May 25. The announcement emphasizes that the CBDC will operate “as an extension of the physical currency,” and is intended to improve the retail …
Technology / May 28, 2021
German federal bank runs successful blockchain system without a CBDC
Germany’s federal bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, has run successful tests on a project which bridges the traditional finance infrastructure with blockchain technology. Despite the current global rush by central banks to familiarise themselves with central bank digital currency technology, the testing carried out by the Bundesbank, in conjunction with the Deutsche Börse Group and the German Finance Agency, required the issuance of no CB, or any tokenized money at all. The system reportedly relies on two software modules which form a connection between the Bundesbank’s internal system and distributed ledger technology. Instead of creating a token-based system, the bank simply …
Technology / March 24, 2021
UK government establishes central bank digital currency task force
Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Bank of England have begun preliminary central bank digital currency studies that could result in the creation of a national digital currency. In a document published by HM Treasury, the exchequer announced the creation of a CBDC task force in collaboration with the United Kingdom’s central bank. Sir Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor of the Bank of England, and Katharine Braddick, director general of financial services at HM Treasury, will co-chair the task force. According to the terms of reference document, the task force will synergize the efforts of all relevant statutory bodies in the U.K. …
Technology / April 19, 2021
Cypherium CEO Predicts CBDC Cross-Border Payments ‘Soon’
Sky Guo, founder of the Cypherium blockchain, predicts that central bank digital currency cross-border payments will happen “in the next couple years” or “even sooner”. In an interview with Cointelegraph on July 13, Guo said that CBDC development among central banks makes it likely that certain countries in European Union, China and America, will take the lead and experiment with cross-border payments sooner than expected. CBDC cross border challenges Countries around the world are experimenting with CBDC pilots domestically, such as ride-sharing giant Didi signing “a strategic partnership” with the Digital Currency Research Institute of The People's Bank of China. …
Technology / July 16, 2020